The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill, which is set to introduce, among key reforms, a new failure to prevent fraud offence, is in the final stages of the Parliamentary process. The Bill is expected to receive Royal Assent by the end of this year. Read more

The FCA has released its Business Plan 2023/24; the plan covers the second year in the FCA's three-year Strategy.  This is one document among the annual publications issued by the regulator which provide insight into its priorities and focus... Read more

In case you missed it while grappling with new sanctions in recent weeks, at the end of June 2022, HM Treasury (HMT) published the outcome of last year's consultation on forthcoming amendments to the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 (MLRs) (the Consultation). These include a new requirement to assess and mitigate the risk of proliferation financing, in addition to amendments to the discrepancy reporting regime, and scope of the regulated sector. Some of the changes consulted upon will come into force shortly, on 1 September 2022. Read more

In this blog post, we round-up key forthcoming developments in the UK and at EU and International levels in financial services regulation which are expected to happen in July and August 2022. Read more

The Hong Kong government has gazetted amendments to the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing Ordinance (AMLO) to enhance Hong Kong’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) regulatory regime. The amendments will be introduced into the Legislative Council (LegCo) for first reading on 6 July 2022. Read more

At the moment, the FCA's only powers over crypto businesses which do not carry on investment, payment services, e-money or other UK regulated business come from its role as their anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing supervisor. This will change in due course in respect of stablecoin businesses (with HMT consulting on bringing these into scope) and in respect of financial promotions of certain cryptoassets (both HMT and FCA are consulting on this). Read more

In this blog post, we round-up key forthcoming developments in the UK and at EU and International levels in financial services regulation which are expected to happen in February and March 2022. Read more

On 13 January 2022, the UK's Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (the "FCDO") announced the publication of the UK's first post-Brexit annual sanctions report (the "Report"). Read more