Regulators around the world dropped the hammer more heavily on a raft of financial institutions for various rule breaches and problems, and the digital assets and cryptocurrency space was a particular area of concern.

The value of regulatory fines issued to financial institutions worldwide more than quadrupled in the first half of 2025 compared with the same period a year earlier, with digital assets companies increasingly coming under scrutiny, figures show.

Between January and June 2025, regulators levied 139 financial penalties totalling $1.23 billion, according to publicly-available data analysed by Fenergo, a Dublin-headquartered provider of tech solutions for KYC, client lifecycle management and other functions. The figure marks a 417 per cent increase from the same period in 2024, when 118 fines were issued worth $238.6 million. 

Penalties spanned violations tied to anti-money laundering, KYC, sanctions, suspicious activity reports (SARs), and transaction monitoring, the report said yesterday. 

Digital assets
The digital assets/cryptocurrencies space is a particular point of regulatory focus, the report said. 

The most significant penalty in H1 2025 came from the US Department of Justice (DOJ), which fined cryptocurrency exchange OKX more than $504 million after it pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective AML programme in February, the report said. Another crypto exchange, BitMEX, was also ordered to pay more than $100 million for similar failings. 

North American regulators imposed the lion’s share of penalties in value terms, totalling more than $1.06 billion. This represented a 565 per cent surge from H1 2024. In Europe, the Middle East and Africa, fines reached $168.2 million, rising by 147 per cent from $68 million a year earlier.

In contrast, Asia-Pacific authorities issued just $3.4 million in fines, falling significantly from $10.7 million in the first half of 2024.

While AML-related violations continue to dominate enforcement activity, Fenergo noted a sharp rise in sanctions-related penalties. Sanctions compliance breaches in H1 2025 drew $228.8 million in fines, rising from just $3.7 million in the same period last year.

“These figures offer a stark warning to financial institutions across the globe – particularly those operating in the fast-growing digital assets sector, where watchdogs won’t hesitate to dole out hefty fines for AML shortcomings,” Rory Doyle, head of financial crime policy at Fenergo, said. “The findings also reflect a global trend of increased regulatory scrutiny around sanctions compliance, as geopolitical tensions and evolving sanctions regimes place greater pressure on firms to bolster their systems and processes.”