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Credit Suisse International, Credit Suisse Securities (Europe) Ltd, and Credit Suisse AG

FCA enforcement action, 2021

£147m
financial penalty
Money Laundering$ Bribery & CorruptionAMLINVESTMENTPRINCIPLES
Where this fine sits
Rank (largest first)
#3 of 44
Top percentile
Top 10%
vs. median fine
40.5x
smallestlargest

What failed

Weak financial-crime and anti-bribery controls around opaque loans connected to sovereign debt.

Read the final notice

The controls that would have caught it

These controls map directly to this failure. Open any one in the Control Builder to set your own thresholds, owners and systems, then export an implementation-ready spec.

In short, the firm needed

  • Enhanced due diligence on PEP and sovereign exposures
  • Bribery and corruption risk assessment on each deal
  • Independent credit and financial-crime sign-off
  • Gifts, hospitality and conflicts controls

Enhanced Due Diligence Programme

Preventive

Customer Due Diligence

For the highest-risk customers, run a deeper, joined-up due diligence package (extra evidence, senior sign-off, closer monitoring) and make sure it actually happens before and during the relationship.

Starting threshold:
EDD mandatory on any reg.33 trigger; require 100% of the defined EDD evidence pack complete plus recorded senior approval before activation; enhanced ongoing monitoring with review at least every 12 months (every 6 months for PEPs and the highest-risk band); EDD review more than 30 days overdue is a reportable control breach.
First-line owner:
Relationship Management / KYC Operations with EDD specialists
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PEP Screening

Preventive

Screening

Flags customers who are senior public officials or their close associates so the firm applies extra checks before and during the relationship.

Starting threshold:
Fuzzy match score >= 85% auto-routes to a PEP review queue; matches with corroborating secondary identifiers (DOB, nationality) at >= 80% are also routed for review.
First-line owner:
Onboarding / Relationship management
Design this control

Adverse Media Screening

Detective

Screening

Searches news and public sources for negative stories about a customer (fraud, corruption, crime) so the firm spots risk that lists alone miss.

Starting threshold:
Fuzzy name match >= 85% combined with a financial-crime-relevant category and a credible source auto-routes to review; lower-relevance categories or weak sources are batched for risk-based triage.
First-line owner:
Screening Operations / EDD analysts
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Typologies behind this case

Related enforcement cases

Enforcement data is sourced from the FCA fines dataset. The control mapping is an analyst view of what would have addressed the failings described in the public notice, not a statement of the regulator's findings.