The Hong Kong Insurance Authority has ordered FWD Life Insurance Company (Bermuda) Limited to pay a HKD 19.5 million penalty after an on-site inspection identified systemic weaknesses in its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing controls and governance. The contraventions occurred during periods between April 2012 and September 2024 and affected third-party payment verification, suspicious transaction monitoring, politically exposed person screening and customer due diligence for higher-risk relationships. FWD lacked sufficiently robust payor identification controls for large premium payments, failed to examine split cash payments across 306 policies and had a system design flaw that missed more than 100 potentially suspicious transaction alerts. Deficient data and screening processes also led it to miss 58 customers or beneficial owners with politically exposed person status, while required senior management approvals were not obtained promptly for 19 higher-risk policyholders. FWD has implemented remedial measures, and enhanced reviews found no onboarding of customers who should not have been accepted because of delayed detection.

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