The U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has levied a record $125 million civil penalty against UBS Financial Services Inc. for willful violations of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), the largest fine ever imposed against a broker-dealer for anti-money laundering failures. The penalty, issued on Aug. 3, 2026, followed the firm's repeated failure to correct long-standing shortcomings in its anti-money laundering (AML) program.
The action is the second enforcement against UBS's brokerage arm. In 2018, the firm paid $14.5 million in civil penalties and agreed to remediate weaknesses in its monitoring of foreign currency transfers. Regulators found that UBS failed to make the essential modifications and continued to use an inferior legacy monitoring system into 2021. Therefore, the firm did not supervise more than 50,000 foreign currency wires worth more than $10 billion from January 2019 till June 2023.
Repeat Offenses and Regulatory Scrutiny
FinCEN said UBS was a repeat offender because it failed to remedy concerns discovered in a 2018 enforcement action. The regulator determined that inaccuracies, inadequate data and mislabeling in UBS’s automated monitoring system had created ongoing supervisory problems. In addition, the firm did not do sufficient customer due diligence on high risk clients with links to Russia and Latin America and did not detect and disclose suspicious transactions for those clients.
In the FinCEN settlement, UBS confessed to knowingly violating the Bank Secrecy Act, including by failing to develop and maintain an adequate AML program and by not filing the required suspicious activity reports. The firm also agreed to separate penalties with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, bringing the total fines across authorities to $153 million.
Remediation and Next Steps
The resolution requires UBS to engage a third party consultant to perform a “lookback” to identify and report questionable transactions which were not identified during the relevant period. The firm must also undergo an independent review of its AML program and implement recommended improvements. If UBS demonstrates full compliance with the remediation requirements, FinCEN has agreed to waive up to $15 million of the penalty.
A spokesperson for UBS stated that the settlements bring 'closure to this legacy matter,' adding that the bank has 'cooperated fully with its regulators and has made significant investments to remediate and strengthen its AML program in line with leading industry practices.' The Americas remain a key strategic market for UBS, which recently received approval to convert its U.S. banking unit to a nationally chartered bank as part of its expansion plans in the region.
