FINRA fines Credit Suisse Securities $16.5M for AML faults

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) announced on December 5, 2016, that it had fined Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC $16.5 million for anti-money laundering (AML), supervision and other violations.

FINRA found that Credit Suisse’s suspicious activity monitoring program was deficient in two respects. First, Credit Suisse primarily relied on its registered representatives to identify and escalate potentially suspicious trading, including in microcap stock transactions. In practice, however, high-risk activity was not always escalated and investigated, as required. Second, the firm’s automated surveillance system to monitor for potentially suspicious money movements was not properly implemented. A significant portion of the data feeds into the system were missing information or had other issues that compromised the system’s effectiveness. The firm also chose not to utilize certain available scenarios designed to identify common suspicious patterns and activities, and it failed to adequately investigate activity identified by the scenarios that the firm did utilize.

• FINRA Letter of Acceptance, Waiver and Consent