On 13 November 2018, the FCA published a report entitled Financial crime: analysis of firms’ data. The report follows on from the FCA’s 2016 annual financial crime data return – in which over 2,000 firms (including all UK based banks and building societies), had to provide intelligence on the threats and trends they are facing.

In its analysis of the first year of data, the FCA notes:

• almost 120,000 customers fall into the category of ‘politically exposed persons’ in which those with prominent public jobs may be in a position to abuse their role for private gain. Similarly, firms had 1.6 million other ‘high risk customers’: firms are required to subject such customers to enhanced due diligence checks;
• an estimate of £650 million is spent annually by firms to combat financial crime, and during the data return period, 923,000 suspicious cases of activity were escalated internally in firms. Of these, 363,000 were reported to the National Crime Agency by firms’ Money Laundering Reporting Officers.1.15 million customers were refused service for financial crime related reasons in the data period;
• cyber-enabled financial crime was the most noted form of financial crime, whilst employees within firms were the largest predicted perpetrators of expenses crimes – a number of charts detailing financial crime rates are provided in chapter 4; and
• firms’ view on aggregate Iran, Panama and Russia to be the highest risk jurisdictions for financial crime. A full ranking of countries by their perceived risk is provided in chapter 5 – however the FCA notes that this table does not represent the opinion of the FCA.