American Express has been fined $350 million by two federal regulators who say the company’s bank spent years running a money-laundering watch program that was too weak for a business its size. The penalties, announced on Thursday, October 8, came from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve, and they target American Express National Bank, the unit that issues the company’s cards and holds customer deposits.
This was not a fine over a single missed report. According to the regulators, the bank’s anti-money-laundering operation was understaffed and underbuilt: too few resources, too many inexperienced employees, thin training, and gaps in the internal controls that are supposed to catch dirty money before it moves. Over roughly the past decade, the bank failed to properly identify, evaluate, or report an estimated $13 billion in suspicious activity.
Regulators Say the Bank Watched the Small Stuff
One detail stands out. The OCC said the bank aimed most of its monitoring energy at its smaller deposit products, while its far larger credit card business got far less attention. In other words, the watchdog effort was pointed at the small end of the operation while most of the money flowed through the big end.
Regulators also found shortcomings in the basics: how the bank identifies its customers and checks who it is doing business with. Those customer due-diligence steps are the first line of defense against laundering, because a bank that does not really know its customers cannot tell when their transactions stop making sense.
American Express neither admitted nor denied the regulators’ findings. Chief Executive Stephen Squeri said the bank is committed to fixing the concerns raised. The company also said the penalty, together with what it will spend on repairs, is not expected to change its financial outlook for 2026 or 2027.
What Happens Now
The fine is only part of the sentence. Under the OCC’s consent order, American Express National Bank has 90 days to hand regulators a detailed corrective action plan, and a committee of its own board has to oversee the fix. The bank must also strengthen the exact areas that failed: its program for assessing money-laundering risk and its customer due-diligence work, the basic job of knowing who its customers are and what they do.
The bank also has to pay for a second look at its own past. An independent third party must conduct a retrospective review of suspicious activity from the years in question to determine whether reports that were never filed should have been. Separately, the Federal Reserve ordered the company to produce an enterprise-wide plan for improving compliance, and its travel-services arm must address compliance with OFAC sanctions rules. One limit regulators did not impose: there is no asset cap, so the orders do not restrict the bank’s size or growth.
What This Means If You Bank With American Express
A fine like this does not put your deposits or your card account in danger, and you do not need to move your money. What it usually does mean is a season of much tighter scrutiny. When regulators order a bank to strengthen its monitoring, the bank often responds by casting a wider net, and ordinary customers can get caught in it. Accounts get flagged, limited, or even closed with little explanation, sometimes over perfectly legal activity that simply looks unusual to an algorithm.
A few habits protect you if that happens:
- Keep your own records. Save statements and receipts for large or unusual transactions, such as big cash deposits, business payments, or money sent to family overseas, so you can explain them if asked.
- Watch your accounts. Review statements regularly and report anything you do not recognize right away.
- Check your credit reports. You can pull them free at AnnualCreditReport.com and dispute anything that is not yours.
- Know about ChexSystems. If a bank ever closes your account, that closure can land on your ChexSystems report and make opening a new account harder. You are entitled to a free copy of that report, and you can dispute errors on it just like a credit report.
Big banks are being told, loudly and expensively, that the rules apply to them too. For the rest of us, the lesson is simpler: the cleaner your paper trail, the less a bank’s compliance crackdown can hurt you.
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