Swiss banking giant UBS AG has been hit with a £27.6 million (C$48.6 million) fine by the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for nearly 10 years of transaction reporting failures.
The FCA fined the firm for failings involving 135.8 million transaction reports between November 2007 and May 2017. Specifically, the regulator said that UBS failed to ensure it provided complete, accurate information for approximately 86.7 million reportable transactions, and that it reported 49.1 million transactions to the FCA that didn’t have to be reported.
Given these failings, the FCA found that the firm “failed to take reasonable care” to ensure that it was meeting its transaction reporting responsibilities.
The regulator relies on these reports to help uncover manipulative trading, market abuse and other forms of financial crime.
“Firms must have proper systems and controls to identify what transactions they have carried out, on what markets, at what price, in what quantity and with whom. If firms cannot report their transactions accurately, fundamental risks arise, including the risk that market abuse may be hidden,” Mark Steward, executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA, said in a statement.
The firm agreed to resolve the case and, as a result, it qualified for a 30% discount on its penalty. Without the discount, the penalty would have been £39.4 million, the FCA said.