Statement on inspection in Basisbank A / S (money laundering area)

On 6 and 7 October 2021, the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority inspected Basisbank. The inspection was an investigation of the money laundering area. The inspection included an examination of the company’s risk assessment, policies, business procedures and internal controls as well as the company’s customer knowledge, including monitoring of customers.

Risk assessment and summary

Basisbank was a bank that at the start of the inspection operated exclusively online. The bank dealt with private customers residing in Denmark. The bank addressed Danish customers in particular with deposit surpluses, and offered simple deposit and savings products. 

In addition, the bank dealt with lending, where the bank offered both cash loans and mortgages. 

On 14 June 2021, the bank had announced that the bank had initiated a process of winding up its business in Denmark, which is why the bank no longer accepts new customers.

The Danish Financial Supervisory Authority assesses that the company’s inherent risk of being used for money laundering or terrorist financing is medium to high assessed in relation to the average of financial companies in Denmark. In the assessment, the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority has placed special emphasis on the fact that the bank has only remote customers and that the bank has a relatively large number of sub-customers. 

The Danish FSA found a number of factors during the inspection that the bank has been made aware of. Among other things, it was about on the need for a review of both the risk policy and the business process for establishing customer relationships, as well as the need for the bank to make an actual and concrete risk assessment of customers, and for the bank to investigate the background and purpose of transactions that the bank deems suspicious.

In view of the bank’s liquidation, the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority has failed to comment on the basis of the inspection, as the reactions would relate to activities that the bank no longer carries out.