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Asia-PacificNovember 30 2020

Asia’s banks slammed by regulatory fines

Banks in Asia received a record number of regulatory fines in 2020. What’s behind the rise and do these penalties work? 
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The year 2020 has been a memorable one in Asia, but for all the wrong reasons. With the lingering US-China trade war knocked out of the headlines by the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic, the region’s banks had enough to deal with without regulators coming to do their checks. 

But the regulators did come, and what they found did little to cheer up the sector. Instead, the region’s banks ended up receiving the highest amount of fines issued to date for a multitude of anti-money laundering (AML), combating the financing of terrorism (CFT) and know your customer (KYC) breaches — in some cases dating back several years. 

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Kimberley Long is the Asia editor at The Banker. She joined from Euromoney, where she spent four years as transaction services editor. She has a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Liverpool, and an MA in Print Journalism from the University of Sheffield. Between degrees she spent a year teaching English in Japan as part of the JET Programme.
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