The former chairman of NatWest has criticised the anti-money laundering (AML) rules in Britain as urgently needing reform, arguing that they imposed a £30 billion a year burden on UK banks while leading to few prosecutions.

Sir Howard Davies, who left the bank in April, said that the regime was “remarkably burdensome” and the subject of complaints by foreign banks who found it much tougher than in the rest of Europe.

“AML needs fundamental reform,” he said, giving evidence to a House of Lords committee on financial regulation.

“Financial firms produce huge volumes of suspicious activity reports which go into some mysterious computer hopper somewhere, and nothing ever seems to come out the other end,” Davies, a former chairman of the Financial Services Authority, said.



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