2021 Financial crime Outlook series Senior management and boards are increasingly acknowledging the threat of financial crime as a critical risk to their business that must be addressed. This has been exacerbated in the last 12 months through the impact of the pandemic as well as rising domestic and international tensions. Our financial crime compliance … Continue Reading
Throughout 2020 and 2021, financial services firms have had to respond and adapt to a number of regulatory challenges in an unprecedented fashion. Firms now have to navigate a diverging regulatory landscape as a result of Brexit, at the same time as continuing to respond to an array of pandemic-related risks that have arisen. Nevertheless, … Continue Reading
On 31 March 2021, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published a Policy Statement which expands the scope of its annual financial crime data return (REP-CRIM) to almost three times as many firms from circa 2,500 to circa 7,000. New firms will be obliged to participate in REP-CRIM from 30 March 2022 onwards. Firms now … Continue Reading
On 24 March 2021, HM Treasury published an updated advisory notice concerning money laundering and terrorist financing controls in higher risk jurisdictions. The advisory notice notes that Regulation 33(3) of the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Amendment) Regulations 2019 provides that a high-risk third country means a country which has been identified by the European … Continue Reading
2021 Financial Crime Outlook Series Senior management and boards are increasingly acknowledging the threat of financial crime as a critical risk to their business that must be addressed. This has been exacerbated in the last 12 months through the impact of the pandemic as well as rising domestic and international tensions. Our financial crime compliance … Continue Reading
2021 Financial crime Outlook series Senior management and boards are increasingly acknowledging the threat of financial crime as a critical risk to their business that must be addressed. This has been exacerbated in the last 12 months through the impact of the pandemic as well as rising domestic and international tensions. Our financial crime compliance … Continue Reading
Senior management and boards are increasingly acknowledging the threat of financial crime as a critical risk to their business that must be addressed. This has been exacerbated in the last 12 months through the impact of the pandemic as well as rising domestic and international tensions. Our financial crime compliance specialists, located in the UK, … Continue Reading
AML as a focus area and point of discussion for many companies will never fade. If anything, the increasing pressure on companies and the expanding list of companies which are caught or impacted by global legislative AML changes means that many will need to continually assess if their AML frameworks are not only adequate but … Continue Reading
On 16 December 2020, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) published a paper providing entities with additional information on COVID-19 related money laundering and terrorist financing risks. The paper covers both changes in predicate offences and changes in money laundering and terrorist financing activity. It provides selected case studies, displaying criminal activity that has occurred … Continue Reading
The FCA has established a Temporary Registration Regime to allow existing cryptoasset firms, who have applied to be registered with the FCA before 16 Dec, to continue trading after 9 January 2021 until 9 July 2021, pending the FCA’s determination of their application. Firms that did not submit an application by 15 December 2020 will … Continue Reading
On 10 September 2020, the European Banking Authority (EBA) published its response to the European Commission’s (EC’s) call for advice on the future of the EU anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CTF) framework. The EBA set out a number of recommendations, in summary these include: Harmonising specific aspects of the Fifth AML Directive, including: … Continue Reading
On 24 August 2020, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published a consultation paper (CP20/17) focused on extending its annual financial crime reporting obligation to include firms that carry on regulated activities that potentially pose a higher money laundering risk. This follows its 2019/20 Business Plan commitment to consider extending the reporting obligation to more firms. … Continue Reading
Further to its communication published last month, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has now published a report into COVID-19-associated money laundering (ML) and terrorist financing (TF) risks and expected policy responses. Key ML/TF risks The report identified the following key ML and TF risks: Increased remote transactions – given the closure of many physical … Continue Reading
On 1 April 2020, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) published a statement in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The statement touched on a number of areas of which the key ones for the financial services industry were: Remaining vigilant in light of the COVID-19-related financial crime risks: FATF has flagged an increase in … Continue Reading
On 31 March 2020, the European Banking Authority (EBA) published the following: Statement on supervisory reporting and Pillar 3 disclosures in light of COVID-19. Among other things the EBA states that Member State competent and resolution authorities should assess the extent to which a delayed submission of all the data or subsets of the data … Continue Reading
On 10 October 2019, the Joint Money Laundering Steering Group (JMLSG) announced that HM Treasury had approved the revised guidance on syndicated lending set out in Part II, Chapter 17 of the JMLSG guidance. The amendments to the JMLSG guidance clarify that market participants entering into a syndicated loan transaction, whether in the capacity of … Continue Reading
On 1 October 2019, the General Secretariat of the Council of the EU (the Council) published a European Commission (Commission) non-paper on key elements of a refined methodology for identifying high-risk third countries under Directive (EU) 2015/849 (the Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive). Following the rejection by the Council of the most recent Delegated Regulation identifying … Continue Reading
Background In 2017, the Law Commission agreed with the Home Office to review and provide recommendations on the UK’s anti-money laundering (AML) and counter terrorist financing (CTF) regimes, in particular, the suspicious activity reporting (SAR) regime. On 18 June 2019, the Law Commission published a report on the SARs regime. The report looked at the … Continue Reading
The City of London Law Society (CLLS) has published its response to HM Treasury’s (HMT’s) consultation on transposing the EU Fifth Money Laundering Directive (5MLD) into the UK law. The response has been prepared by the CLLS Regulatory Law Committee (Committee) and it has focused on the following areas: cryptoassets and registration of express trusts. … Continue Reading
Today (just to note TR19/4 was published on 4/6), the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published its latest thematic review, TR19/4, which looks at money laundering (ML) risks in capital markets. The FCA visited 19 market sector operators, including investment banks, recognised investment exchanges, clearing and settlement houses, trade bodies, inter-dealer brokers, trading firms and a … Continue Reading
On 15 April 2019, HM Treasury published its consultation on the steps the UK Government proposes to take to meet the UK’s expected obligation to transpose the Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (5MLD) into national law. The 5MLD makes a number of changes to the Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive which was mentioned in our update last … Continue Reading
