AI-enabled solutions for KYC, transaction monitoring, and CLM Fenergo has released its half-year annual findings regarding global financial institution enforcement actions.
According to Fenergo’s data, the value of regulatory fines for financial institutions globally in the first half of 2025 more than quadrupled compared to the same period of 2024, with digital asset companies contributing more to this number.
Heftier fines for global FIs
As per publicly available data, regulators issued approximately 139 financial penalties during this period, totalling USD 1.23 billion, a 417% increase on the same period of last year, where a total of 118 fines were issued, worth USD 238.6 million. The majority of the fines related to AML, KYC, sanctions, suspicious activity reports (SARs), and transaction monitoring violations.
Additionally, Fenergo’s findings, which cover enforcement actions from EMEA, North America, and Asia Pacific from January 2025 to June 2025, follow a multi-year trend of scaling fines, as regulators continue a worldwide movement to uncover illicit behaviour. The highest penalty was issued by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) to cryptocurrency exchange OKX, with the company paying over USD 504 million after it pled guilty to failing to maintain an effective AML programme in February 2025. BitMEX was also fined by the DOJ for similar misconduct, with the cryptocurrency exchange having to pay USD 100 million. These moves made by the regulator emphasise the push from American authorities to hold digital asset institutions accountable for their actions.
Furthermore, fines issued by North American watchdogs witnessed the most significant increase in value, totalling over USD 10.6 billion, a 565% surge compared to the same period of last year. At the same time, EMEA experienced an increase in penalties, with regulators imposing USD 168.2 million worth of fines, up 147% from USD 68 million. On the other hand, the value of penalties in APAC decreased, as authorities issued a total of USD 3.4 million in penalties in the first half of 2025, down from USD 10.7 million in the same period in 2024.
Fenergo also found that, even if fines related to AML held the largest share, there has also been an increase in the value of those related to sanction failures. During the analysed period, there were USD 228.8 million worth of penalties for sanctions compliance failures, compared to USD 3.7 million in H1 2024.
Commenting on the findings, representatives from Fenergo emphasised that the recent findings reflect a global trend of scaled regulatory scrutiny around sanctions compliance, as geopolitical tensions and evolving sanctions regimes put more pressure on companies to optimise their systems and processes.
