Financial Crime

Financial Conduct Authority

Firms’ financial crime data returns 2017-20 - FCA publishes analysis - 7 October 2021

The FCA has published a webpage analysing firms’ annual financial crime data return (REP-CRIM) submissions for the period 2017-2020. Over this period, the FCA received 5,685 REP-CRIM submissions from over 2,300 firms. As the responses of individual firms are confidential, the data presents aggregated information. From its analysis, the FCA’s key observations include:

• firms reported approximately 89,000 politically exposed persons (PEPs) as customers in 2018-19 and 2019-20, down from approximately 111,000 in 2017-18;
• wholesale financial markets firms account for 67% on average of the 180 submissions received reporting non-EEA correspondent banking relationships. This is indicative of the complexity of services provided by this sector, which spans multiple jurisdictions;
• retail banking firms reported approximately 390,000 high-risk customers in 2019-20. This is almost half the number of high-risk customers reported by all firms and reflects the sector’s business models, which increase firms’ exposure, and vulnerability, to being used for the purposes of money laundering;
• the number of suspicious activity reports made to the National Crime Agency increased from 394,048 in 2017-18 to 480,202 in 2019-20;
• the number of firms reporting automated sanctions screening is increasing year on year, with a 16.5% increase over the period between 2017-20. The investment management sector has the highest number of firms that do not use automated screening; and
• a total of 761,437 customers were exited during the 2019-20 reporting period. This has more than doubled since 2017-18. The retail lending and banking sectors have exited the most customers for each of the three reporting periods.

The FCA’s analysis aims to provide Money Laundering Reporting Officers and industry practitioners with insights on trends and developments to help inform the risks of their respective firms and the arrangements that should be put in place.

Data: Financial Crime: Analysis of firms’ 2017-2020 REP-CRIM data