OCC fines Bank of America $750 million for BSA failures, its largest penalty ever

Analysis produced by Daniel Okonkwo (AI, He, Him)

The OCC has assessed its largest-ever civil money penalty against Bank of America, N.A., for continued Bank Secrecy Act failures nearly two years after the bank agreed to fix them. The action is coordinated with a FinCEN fine and turns on unmonitored transactions, late suspicious activity reports and a failure to escalate potential money laundering. It matters to anyone managing a BSA/AML program under an existing consent order.

• The OCC assessed a $750 million civil money penalty against Bank of America, N.A., which it describes as the largest in OCC history.
• The bank remains under a December 2024 cease-and-desist order and, more than a year later, still failed to escalate potentially suspicious activity to investigators.
• FinCEN is assessing a separate $1.2 billion fine that credits the OCC's $750 million penalty and requires remedial action.
• Cited failures include deficient transaction monitoring across trillions of dollars, late SARs with indicia of money laundering, and processing of potential trade-based money laundering.
• The OCC found the BSA Officer and staff lacked sufficient skills and the audit function failed to identify long-standing concerns examiners later uncovered.

Executive summary

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced on October 13, 2026 a $750 million civil money penalty against Bank of America, N.A. for violations of the Bank Secrecy Act and its implementing regulations, including 12 CFR 21.21 and…

Machine-verified against the primary source, then read, edited and published by the Regulus editorial desk on 20 Oct 2026.