Regulatory penalties for global financial institutions skyrocket 417% in H1 2025

NEW YORK, LONDON, DUBLIN – AUGUST 28, 2025 – The value of regulatory fines issued to financial institutions globally in H1 2025 more than quadrupled compared to the same period last year, with digital assets firms increasingly in the crosshairs, new figures have revealed.  

The findings come as Fenergo, the leading provider of AI-powered solutions for know your customer (KYC), transaction monitoring, and client lifecycle management (CLM), today released its half-year annual findings on global financial institution enforcement actions. 

Regulators levied approximately 139 financial penalties, according to publicly available data, in the first half of 2025, totalling $1.23bn – a 417% increase on the same period in 2024, where a total 118 fines were issued worth $238.6m. The fines relate to anti-money laundering (AML), know your customer (KYC), sanctions, suspicious activity reports (SARs), and transaction monitoring violations. 

The findings – which relate to enforcement actions spanning EMEA, North America and Asia Pacific from January 2025 to June 2025 – continue a multi-year trend of increasing fines, as watchdogs continue a global crackdown on illicit behaviour.  

The most significant penalty was issued by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) to cryptocurrency exchange OKX, which paid more than $504m after it pled guilty to failing to maintain an effective AML program in February. Another cryptocurrency exchange, BitMEX, was also fined more than $100m by the DOJ for similar AML failings, highlighting the continued push from American authorities to hold digital assets institutions to account.  

Penalties imposed by North American regulators saw the largest increase in terms of value,  totalling over $1.06bn – a 565% surge on the same period in 2024. EMEA also experienced an uptick of penalties with watchdogs issuing $168.2m worth of fines, up 147% from $68m. Meanwhile, the value of penalties issued by regulators in APAC fell. Authorities in APAC issued a total $3.4m of penalties in H1 this year, down considerably from $10.7m in H1 2024.  

While fines related to AML represent the greatest share of penalties this year, there has been a marked increase in the value of those related to sanctions failures specifically. There was approximately $3.7m worth of fines issued in H1 2024 for sanctions monitoring failures, while $228.8m worth of penalties were doled out for sanctions compliance breaches in H1 this year.  

Commenting on the findings, Rory Doyle, Head of Financial Crime Policy at Fenergo, said:

“These figures offer a stark warning to financial institutions across the globe – particularly those operating in the fast-growing digital assets sector, where watchdogs won’t hesitate to dole out hefty fines for AML shortcomings. The findings also reflect a global trend of increased regulatory scrutiny around sanctions compliance, as geopolitical tensions and evolving sanctions regimes place greater pressure on firms to bolster their systems and processes. 

“The importance of integrating smarter financial crime technology with AI to increase accuracy and strengthen due diligence processes cannot be overstated in this context – especially as firms continue to grapple with more complex markets and a shortage of skilled financial crime professionals.”