Santander fined £33m for keeping dead customers' money from relatives

Spanish bank Santander was fined £33m on Tuesday for failing to pass on £183m of deceased customers' funds to 40,000 of their relatives, the Financial Conduct Authority said.

The cases happened between January 2013 and July 2016, when Santander failed to properly organise and control its bereavement process.

According to the FCA, the lender sometimes kept the money for years and took very long to resolve the issues even once they had come to light.

Mark Steward, executive director of enforcement at the FCA, said: “These failings took too long to be identified and then far too long to be fixed.

"To the firm’s credit, once these problems were notified to the board and senior management, they were fixed properly and promptly. But recognition of the problem took too long.

"Firms must be able to identify and respond to problems more quickly especially when they are causing harm to customers."