US regulators finalised a roughly $1.2 billion penalty against Bank of America for "deficient and ineffective" anti-money laundering controls and "egregious and continued" violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, including $750 million from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — the largest penalty the agency has ever imposed — after the second-largest US bank failed to monitor trillions of dollars in transactions, including those linked to potential Chinese money laundering and illicit finance connected to the US southern border. The bank had committed in 2024 to address its longstanding BSA deficiencies, and the penalty comes days after American Express was fined $350 million for similar failures. The pair reinforce that financial institutions' compliance programmes — not just perimeter security — are in the enforcement crosshairs, a signal for AU/NZ banks' transaction-monitoring, sanctions-screening and token-rotation controls across outsourced financial estates.

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