Bank of America to pay $8M penalty over swap reporting failures

Bank of America and its Merrill Lynch International unit agreed to pay an $8 million civil monetary penalty to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for years of failures in reporting swap transactions. The violations stretch back to approximately 2015, covering a period during which the bank racked up nearly 4 million instances of unreported or incorrectly reported swaps.

The CFTC’s enforcement action centered on Bank of America’s failure to comply with the Commodity Exchange Act and the agency’s regulations governing swap data repositories. When you trade swaps, you’re required to report those trades to centralized databases so regulators can monitor systemic risk.

The 25 distinct categories of errors suggest this wasn’t a single broken pipe but rather a leaky infrastructure. Post-trade allocations, the process of assigning completed trades to specific accounts or entities, were the primary culprit. When those allocations go unreported or get logged incorrectly, regulators lose visibility into who holds what risk and where it sits in the financial system.

No crypto connection, but a broader compliance signal

This enforcement action has nothing to do with crypto. No digital asset tokens were involved. No allegations touched Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any DeFi protocol. The swaps in question were traditional financial instruments, and the failures were squarely in legacy compliance systems.

The CFTC already oversees Bitcoin and Ethereum futures markets and has pursued enforcement actions against crypto-native firms for similar reporting and registration violations.

Bank of America has been gradually warming to digital assets. The bank has reportedly begun recommending that wealth management clients allocate between 1% and 4% of their portfolios to digital assets. It also has plans to commence coverage of Bitcoin ETFs in January 2026.

What this means for investors

When Bank of America eventually processes Bitcoin ETF transactions at scale for its wealth management clients, the CFTC and SEC will expect flawless reporting. This settlement is a reminder that the bank has historically struggled with exactly that.

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