The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has issued a cease‑and‑desist order against American Express Bank, citing severe and long‑running failures in its Bank Secrecy Act and anti‑money laundering (BSA/AML) program.
According to the OCC, the Sandy, Utah‑based bank failed to maintain a compliance program that met regulatory requirements. Examiners found inadequate staffing, insufficient expertise, systemic internal control gaps, weak independent testing, and poor BSA/AML training for employees and directors. The agency also determined that the bank’s risk assessments were misaligned with its business activities, focusing heavily on deposit products while neglecting its far more dominant credit and charge card operations.
The OCC said American Express Bank experienced systemic breakdowns in customer due diligence processes, resulting in a failure to identify, evaluate, and properly report approximately $13 billion in suspected trade‑based money laundering activity over the past decade. Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould emphasized that institutions of American Express’s size must devote sufficient resources to programs designed to detect and prevent money laundering, calling such controls critical to both economic and national security.
“American Express failed to maintain a BSA/AML compliance program properly aligned with the money laundering risks of its operations,” Gould said. “This resulted in failures to timely identify and report significant suspicious activity and to provide important information to law enforcement. Today’s actions will serve to focus American Express on properly addressing such risks as it continues to serve its customers.”
