Regulatory fines more than quadrupled in the past year, says Fenergo
28 August 2025 US, UK and Ireland
Reporter: Zarah Choudhary
Image: Daniel/stock.adobe.com
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, a provider of AI-powered solutions for know your customer (KYC), transaction monitoring, and client lifecycle management (CLM), has 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 US$1.23 billion — a 417 per cent increase on the same period in 2024, where a total 118 fines were issued worth US$238.6 million.
The fines relate to anti-money laundering (AML), 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 US$504 million after it pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective AML programme in February.
Another cryptocurrency exchange, BitMEX, was also fined more than US$100 million by the DOJ for similar AML failings.
Penalties imposed by North American regulators saw the largest increase in terms of value, the report says, totalling over US$1.06 billion — a 565 per cent surge on the same period in 2024.
EMEA also experienced an uptick of penalties with watchdogs issuing US$168.2 million worth of fines, up 147 per cent from US$68 million.
Meanwhile, the value of penalties issued by regulators in APAC fell.
Authorities in APAC issued a total US$3.4 million of penalties in the first half of this year, down considerably from US$10.7 million 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 US$3.7 million worth of fines issued in H1 2024 for sanctions monitoring failures, while US$228.8 million worth of penalties were doled out for sanctions compliance breaches in H1 2025.
Rory Doyle, head of Financial Crime Policy at Fenergo, says: “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.”
