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Money Mules: The FCA Says Closing Suspicious Accounts Isn’t Enough The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has recently published the findings of its latest multi-firm review on money mules, highlighting some initially impressive figures. Regulated firms closed 238,396 suspected mule accounts in 2025, up from 184,935 in 2023 and 233,269 in…

Understanding Your Obligations – It Is Not Just About Regulatory Breaches Two recent actions by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), taken weeks apart, make the same point from very different angles. In the first case, a former law firm owner has been banned from financial services after misappropriating more than…

The Requirement Is Confirmed, the Date Is Not If your firm files information at Companies House on behalf of clients, you will need to be registered as an Authorised Corporate Service Provider (ACSP). However, while that requirement has been confirmed, the exact date it becomes mandatory has not, and Companies…

What Regulated Firms Must Have in Place The FCA’s new rules and guidance on non-financial misconduct came into effect on 1 September 2026. If your firm operates under the Senior Managers and Certification Regime, these changes apply to you now. Non-financial misconduct (NFM) covers behaviour that is not of a…

Crypto Is No Longer a Niche Risk in Property The 2025 National Risk Assessment states that property transactions appear in almost every money laundering typology and predicate offence, and the property sector overall is assessed as high risk. This is nothing new; estate agents sit at the front of that…

Cash Thresholds and AML Compliance Obligations for High-Value Dealers and Art Market Participants When we published our previous guide on the Money Laundering Regulations 2026 changes now in place, one of the amendments we flagged was the switch from euro-denominated thresholds to sterling. For high-value dealers and art market participants,…

There is often the misconception among regulated businesses that a Regulation 21 audit is something only large organisations need to worry about. Banks, large national corporations, and businesses with a dedicated compliance department. For smaller businesses, there is sometimes a myth that they are too small for these requirements to…

HMRC Anti-Money Laundering Inspection An HMRC anti-money laundering inspection can feel daunting, particularly for an independent accountancy practice without a large compliance function. The good news is that HMRC inspections are rarely about catching out sophisticated criminals. They are about whether your paperwork holds together and whether what you do…

In our recent article, Cash Buyers and Property Transactions: The Due Diligence Your Agency Needs to Be Doing, we looked at why funding routes that sit outside the mortgage system carry elevated money laundering risk. In follow-up, this guide focuses on the part of that process estate and letting agents…

In an earlier article, we highlighted how it is often the fundamentals, rather than complex laundering schemes, that bring regulated businesses to HMRC’s attention. Read that article here, ‘Recent AML Fines: Why Regulated Businesses Are Still Getting the Basics Wrong’. Recent HMRC Enforcement Data – Important lessons for Regulated Businesses…