Malaysia fines Bank Islam Malaysia MYR3.44m for service disruptions and AML/CFT screening

BIMB had multiple unplanned downtimes between June 2023 and December 2024.

Malaysia’s central bank has imposed an administrative monetary penalty of MYR3.44m to Bank Islam Malaysia Berhad (BIMB) due to service disruptions, and breaches to anti-money launder and combating financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) screening requirements

BIMB was penalized MYR1.74m due to multiple unplanned downtimes between 1 June 2023 and 31 December 2024. This caused “prolonged disruptions to its banking services, such as e-banking channels, debit card system, and online payment transactions,” according to the Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM).

“BIMB’s non-compliance resulted from lapses in executing the response and recovery process to restore the disrupted systems promptly. This has impacted the availability of essential banking services for its customers and counterparties,” the central bank said in a statement on 30 July 2025.

BNM separately imposed a penalty of MYR1.7m on the bank for non-compliance to sanctions screening requirements under AML/CFT rules.

First, BNM said that it identified the breach during an on-site examination, which revealed gaps in BIMB’s sanctions screening process and system.

Second, BIMB reportedly failed to conduct timely sanctions screening against its entire customer database against the Domestic List upon publication of the Federal Gazette in 2022 and 2023. This led to a delay in identifying and confirming a positive name match for three specified entities.

Institutions are required to conduct sanctions screening on existing, potential, or new customers as part of due diligence processes.