£42 Million FCA Fine: Why Knowing Your Partner Is Just as Critical as Knowing Your Customer
https://kypknowyourpartner.blogspot.com/2025/07/42-million-fca-fine-why-knowing-your.html
This week, Barclays was hit with a £42 million fine by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for failing to properly monitor two of its clients, Stunt and Co and WealthTek. The penalty serves as a powerful reminder: in today’s regulatory environment, static onboarding and periodic reviews are no longer enough. Firms need continuous, real-time visibility into their partners’ risk profiles.
What Went Wrong?
The FCA uncovered serious failings in Barclays’ ongoing due diligence processes:
£46.8 million flowed through a Stunt and Co account, tied to the well-known laundering operation Fowler Oldfield, with no adequate monitoring in place.
WealthTek, which was not authorised to hold client money, was onboarded without Barclays identifying or addressing the regulatory gap.
These were not obscure issues hidden deep in data silos. They were readily detectable with the right technology and oversight.
Where KYP Could Have Made the Difference
At KYP, we specialise in solving precisely this kind of problem. Our Know Your Partner and Know Your Portfolio solutions provide dynamic, ongoing monitoring that alerts institutions to changes and anomalies as they happen—not months or years later.
If Barclays had been using KYP, they would have been alerted to:
🔔 WealthTek’s FCA authorisation gap via real-time registry checks
🔔 Volumetric spikes and suspicious transaction flows linked to high-risk entities like Fowler Oldfield
🔔 Ongoing monitoring gaps, with continuously updated risk profiles based on external intelligence—not just internal reviews
Barclays did ultimately cooperate and self-report, which reduced the fine, but with better tools, the breach might never have occurred in the first place.
The Takeaway
In today’s high-stakes compliance landscape, the cost of missed oversight can be catastrophic, not just financially, but reputationally. Institutions can no longer afford to rely on outdated, point-in-time risk assessments.
KYP delivers the continuous, data-driven visibility required to Protect Your Portfolio and stay ahead of regulatory risk.
👉 Know Your Portfolio