Banking giant Goldman Sachs International has been fined £34.3m by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for failing to provide accurate and timely reporting over a ten-year period.
The penalty relates to more than 220 million transaction reports made between November 2007 and March 2017.
Transaction reporting is important to the FCA because it helps the regulator to identify signs of market abuse and financial crime.
Mark Steward, FCA executive director of enforcement and market oversight, said: “The failings in this case demonstrate a failure over an extended period to manage and test controls that are vitally important to the integrity of our markets.
“These were serious and prolonged failures. We expect all firms will take this opportunity to ensure they can fully detail their activity, and are regularly checking their systems so any problems are detected and remedied promptly, unlike in this case.”
Responding to the FCA’s action, a Goldman Sachs spokesperson said: “We are pleased to have resolved this legacy matter.
“We dealt with the issues proactively at the time and have made significant investments across the period to develop and enhance our reporting procedures.”
Why was Goldman Sachs fined by the FCA?
Goldman Sachs was found to have failings in around 213.6 million reportable transactions over the period, with a further 6.6 million transactions having been erroneously reported to the FCA.
The regulator also said the bank had failed to take “reasonable care” to organise and control its affairs responsibly and effectively in its transaction reporting activities.
This was in relation to its change management processes, maintenance of the counter-party reference data used in its reporting, and how it tested whether all the transactions it reported to the FCA were accurate and complete.
The fine would have been higher had Goldman Sachs not agreed to resolve the case, which earned it a 30% reduction to the overall sum.
The UK finance regulator has previously penalised 13 other firms for breaches of transaction reporting rules, including Barclays, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Merrill Lynch International and Deutsche Bank.
Earlier this month, it handed out a £27.6m fine to Switzerland-based investment bank UBS for similar offences relating to transaction reporting failures.
