Anti-money-laundering cases pile up in 2024

Banks’ anti-money-laundering controls, or lack thereof, were in the spotlight in 2024, led by a regulatory probe into TD Bank Group that revealed startling negligence and compliance failures. 

In October, regulators hit the Toronto-based company’s U.S. subsidiary with a record-setting $3.09 billion fine and capped its assets at $434 billion as part of a plea deal following criminal charges that TD allowed the movement of more than $670 million in dirty money to flow through its channels between 2019 and 2023. The U.S. Department of Justice, which has previously said that it identified at least three money-laundering schemes during that period, has charged two dozen people, including three TD Bank employees, in connection with those crimes.

But TD wasn’t the only bank generating anti-money-laundering-related news in 2024. Bank of America, Wells Fargo and a community bank in Kansas also drew unwanted attention for shortcomings in their own money-laundering compliance practices.

The year was full of other bank regulatory news. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been on a tear lately as Director Rohit Chopra seeks to finalize a flurry of rules, including circulars and reports, that appear to be an effort to gum up the works for the incoming Trump administration. 

The CFPB recently targeted the credit card industry by arguing that issuers may be violating federal laws if they devalue rewards earned by cardholders or make them hard to redeem. 

In December, the bureau finalized a rule that would cap overdraft fees at $5 or at cost, beefed up protections for Property Assessed Clean Energy, or PACE, loans, and issued a blog post on the role of credit cards and cash advance fees in sports gambling. 

Meanwhile, the proposed Basel III endgame capital rules — initially meant to impose higher capital requirements on banks with more than $100 billion of assets — were largely watered down and could see further changes with President-elect Donald Trump at the helm.

Top regulator appointments and how those will change under the new administration generated a fair share of post-election news coverage. The Treasury Department and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will have new leaders next year, and all eyes will be watching to see what unfolds for Jerome Powell at the Federal Reserve and Chopra at the CFPB.

Finally, USAA Bank is navigating a regulatory minefield, an American Banker investigation showed.

Here’s a deeper look at the top regulatory news of 2024.