On 2 September 2025, the Home Office published its outcomes progress report on the Economic Crime Plan 2 (ECP2), which was published in March 2023 and set out how public and private sectors would cut economic crime, protect national security and support the UK’s economic growth. The report provides a summary of key insights from the priority outcomes and indicators being monitored as part of the ECP2 outcomes framework, as well as progress in developing new data to address limitations and improve the ability to comprehensively measure performance.

The report explains that while individual data points show there are some positive indications of trends in how the system is performing, making a robust assessment of overall progress towards ECP2 outcomes is currently challenging. Points of interest from the insights in the report include:

  1. Increase in criminal justice outcomes for money laundering: In the year ending December 2024, there were 6,845 prosecutions and 3,756 convictions for the combined number of principal and non-principal money laundering offences in England and Wales. This is a 36% increase in prosecutions and 7% increase in convictions from the previous year.
  2. Contributions of Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) to asset recovery: SARs assisted in asset denials totalling £230.4 million in the financial year ending 2023. This represents 36% of the total value of assets denied in that financial year.
  3. Increase in fraud offences: The Crime Survey of England and Wales estimated there were 4.16 million fraud offences in the year ending March 2025, a 31% increase on the previous year.
  4. Register of Overseas Entities (ROE): As of 31 March 2025, 32,000 entities have registered on the ROE.
  5. Decrease in financial sanctions breach cases: There were 396 recorded cases of financial sanctions breaches in the financial year ending 2024, a 16% decrease on the previous year, but there were 242 closed cases – more than tripling the number of closed cases from the previous year.
  6. Increase in law enforcement disruptions, in particular in relation to fraud: A disruption is any activity or piece of work that disrupts criminal activity. System-wide disruptions against fraud and illicit finance have been increasing year on year. In the financial year ending 2024, there were 2,050 system-wide disruptions for illicit finance, a 3% increase over the previous year, and 2,862 system-wide disruptions for fraud, a 54% increase on the previous year. ‘High-harm’ disruptions – those which involve the highest risk groups and achieve the highest impact – have also been increasing.

The report states that further data development is required to more directly measure outcomes and improve the ability to determine progress towards ECP2 outcomes. There are several examples of where work is already underway to do this. For example:

  • The Home Office Economic Crime Survey 2024 will provide insights on business experiences of money laundering, fraud and corruption, including an understanding of the risk of money laundering and mitigations in place. It also covers confidence in preparedness for financial sanctions compliance and measures in place to mitigate the risk of breaching financial sanctions. The full survey findings are due to be published later this year.
  • The HM Treasury’s Effectiveness Framework will better evaluate the effectiveness of AML and counter-terrorism financing supervision through the development of a set of enhanced data requests made of supervisors. New metrics have been collected on a ‘best endeavours’ basis as part of the financial year ending 2024 reporting period and published in the Supervision Report 2023-24, including on assessing enforcement action taken against firms by supervisors by risk categorisation. HM Treasury anticipates having a more comprehensive picture in 2026.
  • Companies House and the Department for Business and Trade are currently undertaking monitoring, research and evaluation to understand the impact of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 as it is being implemented to understand whether it has met policy objectives. Findings of this work will be published by 2028.

The Home Office intends to publish an update to its progress report to capture further data development activities in the financial year ending 2027.