Metro Bank Fined £5.38 Million For Inaccurate Reporting to U.K. Watchdog

(Bloomberg) -- The Bank of England’s Prudential Regulatory Authority fined Metro Bank Plc 5.38 million pounds ($7.1 million) for misreporting its capital position to the watchdog.

Metro Bank applied an incorrect risk weighting to certain commercial loans in December 2018 and as a result presented an inaccurate picture of its regulatory capital position to the PRA, the U.K. bank supervisor said in a statement Wednesday.

The PRA and the Financial Conduct Authority opened investigations into how Metro Bank misclassified those assets. The lender, which had a market value of about 3.6 billion pounds at its peak, has seen its shares slide since then. 

“We expect firms to invest appropriate and adequate resources to ensure that they submit accurate regulatory returns,” Sam Woods, chief executive officer of the PRA, said in the statement. “In this case, Metro Bank failed to meet the standards of governance and controls expected of it, resulting in today’s enforcement action.”

Metro Bank, which agreed the resolution of this matter with the PRA and therefore qualified for a 30% reduction in the fine imposed, said in a separate statement that it didn’t have an update on the FCA investigation “at this time.”

Earlier this week, the PRA handed Standard Chartered Plc a record fine after it delayed notifying it about a spreadsheet error that resulted in the bank overestimating its access to U.S. dollar funding.

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