CP26/38: Financial Crime Guide updates

Read CP26/38 (PDF)[2]

Why we're consulting

Firms are essential partners in tackling financial crime.

We want firms to keep detecting, preventing and disrupting financial crime, so we can protect consumers and maintain trust in the financial system.

We want our Financial Crime Guide[3] to keep pace with emerging risks, such as those linked to AI, cryptoassets and evolving sanctions regimes.

We’re proposing changes to the following areas:

• fraud
• cryptoassets – to reflect new regime from October 2027
• financial and trade sanctions
• proliferation financing
• data security
• financial crime systems and controls
• money laundering and terrorist financing

Who this is for

This consultation is relevant to all firms we supervise for financial crime, including under the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 (MLRs), such as:

• Annex 1 financial institutions[4]
• cryptoasset businesses

It may also interest:

• organisations working with these firms
• financial services trade bodies
• professional bodies
• other parties interested in financial crime prevention, including non-governmental organisations and academics

Next steps

Please send us your feedback by 24 December 2026.

You can respond using the online form.

Online response form[5]

If you cannot use the form, email us at [email protected].

We'll consider all responses and publish feedback, along with the final Financial Crime Guide text, in a Policy Statement.

Future plans for the Financial Crime Guide

We are exploring ways to provide financial crime guidance that:

• meets the needs of our wide-ranging and varied population
• is focused on emerging risks and priority areas
• allows for a range of feedback opportunities

This could include:

• holding a series of question-and-answer sessions, either in person or online
• publishing timely standalone guidance without prior consultation, where it is not required

This guidance would then be consolidated within the Financial Crime Guide at a future date.

Background

We last updated the Financial Crime Guide to reflect supervisory findings and changing risks.

Since then, the UK's sanctions regime has evolved, cryptoasset regulation has developed, and firms have increasingly adopted AI and third-party tools for financial crime controls.

These proposals support our objective of making sure markets function well, by reducing and preventing financial crime.

They're also relevant to our consumer protection and integrity objectives and compatible with our secondary objective on international competitiveness and growth.