Wise took up remediation plan in Europe over anti-money laundering controls, FT reports

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(Reuters) -British money transfer firm Wise was forced into a formal remediation plan by European regulators over its anti-money laundering controls, the Financial Times reported on Friday, citing five people familiar with the matter.

A review by the Belgian National Bank, which supervises Wise in Europe, found in early 2022 that the company lacked proof of address for hundreds of thousands of customers, the FT said.

“In 2021, the National Bank of Belgium carried out a routine review of Wise Europe as part of a market-wide exercise in the wake of Brexit,” Wise said in an emailed statement to Reuters.

“We worked closely with our regulator in Belgium and have fully implemented their recommendations.”

Wise devised a remediation plan-approved by the regulator-that required it to contact all of the customers within a matter of weeks to request their proof of address, the report said.

The plan also required the firm to freeze the accounts of customers who did not provide the documents in time, the FT added.

The Belgian National Bank declined to comment to the Financial Times and did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Wise, which was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2021, was founded in 2011 to make international money transfers cheaper, fairer, and simpler.

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(Reporting by Nilutpal Timsina in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Gnaneshwar Rajan and Rishabh Jaiswal; Editing by Abinaya Vijayaraghavan)