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Monetary Authority of Singapore, UOB
The Monetary Authority of Singapore has penalised UOB Kay Hian Private the sum of S$375,000 ($267,107) for business conduct, anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism finance failings.

The failings came to light during a recent MAS inspection of the firm, the regulator said in a statement last week. 

UOBKH has paid the penalty in full, MAS said.

According to its account of the matter, MAS said that between September 2012 and June 2018, UOBKH failed to implement adequate controls for its corporate finance business and failed to ensure that its CF business was subject to internal audit. Among other details, it said UOBKH’s internal policies and procedures on conducting due diligence for IPOs failed to meet the standards set out in the applicable Association of Banks in Singapore Listings Due Diligence Guidelines.

UOBKH did not subject its corporate finance activities to adequate internal audit commensurate with the nature of its business. Specifically, since its inception in September 2012, no internal audits were carried out on the CF department.

Between December 2016 and August 2017, UOBKH also committed breaches of MAS’ AML/CFT requirements, which were a result of material lapses in its control processes, the regulator said.

For example, UOBKH failed to verify customers’ source of wealth during onboarding, even though they were determined by the firm to be of higher money laundering (ML) risk.