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The National Crime Agency (NCA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) have published nine economic crime priorities, with a strong focus on combating fraud and its enablers.
Backed by the Home Office and HM Treasury, the priorities aim to drive collaboration between law enforcement, regulators and the private sector across the UK’s financial system.
“A single set of UK-wide priorities gives firms, and the wider system, helpful clarity,” said FCA financial crime chief Steve Smart.
The initiative has also been welcomed by UK Finance, the banking and payments lobby group.
“This new approach to prioritising our key threats and ensuring we use public and private sector collective capabilities in a more effective way has the potential to be a game changer for efforts to combat Economic Crime,” said Ben Donaldson, the organisation’s chief executive.
“We fully support a way of working that enables the financial services sector and the public sector to be better aligned and ensures maximum impact for our society.”
Tackling fraud
Fraud is a key area of concern, particularly in relation to high-harm schemes such as payment fraud, investment fraud and romance scams.
A key challenge is that more than 70 percent of fraud targeting UK victims is assessed to originate or be enabled from overseas, including jurisdictions such as Ghana, Nigeria, India, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.
In response, the authorities in the UK now plan to strengthen intelligence sharing on jurisdictions of risk and identify how criminal networks exploit legal systems, technology and recruitment channels.
Money mule networks are also an area of focus for the authorities, with more than 39,000 UK bank accounts flagged in 2022 as likely linked to mule activity.
The agencies have proposed industry-wide data sharing, targeted public awareness campaigns and coordinated customer treatment strategies to disrupt this method of laundering.
Origination of fraud
Telecommunications and online platforms remain major fraud enablers, according to the document, with criminals exploiting infrastructure weaknesses and promoting scams through social media personalities offering bogus financial advice.
The NCA and the FCA are urging renewed commitment under the Telecommunications and Online Fraud Charters and more structured intelligence sharing between banks, law enforcement and tech firms.
Other priorities include addressing money laundering by organised crime groups linked to Albania, China, Russia and the United Arab Emirates conducted through UK-based corporate structures.
According to the authorities, these networks make use of underground banking systems, international controller networks and informal value transfer mechanisms.
The agencies intend to improve cross-border tracking of illicit funds, expand private-to-private intelligence sharing and pursue the return of stolen assets.
In the crypto-asset sector, the agencies aim to build resilience against the criminal use of digital currencies.
Priorities include identifying illicit activity linked to fraud, ransomware and terrorist financing, freezing suspect funds on virtual asset platforms, and boosting public awareness of crypto-related risks.
The initiative also seeks to strengthen engagement between law enforcement and regulated crypto service providers.
The nine priorities also address abuse by professional enablers, illicit funds linked to foreign politically exposed persons and the financing of terrorist activity in or against the UK.
Covering all bases
The strategy is aligned with the UK’s National Risk Assessment and the NCA’s 2025 National Strategic Assessment.
The priorities identified by the NCA and FCA align well with the key financial crime challenges faced by payments organisations and regulators worldwide.
Fraud is a huge problem – the NCA has noted that it accounted for more than 40 percent of all crime in the UK in the year to September 2024 – and tackling the many scam typologies requires collaboration between regulators, law enforcement and financial institutions.
Jurisdictions around the world have taken different approaches. The UK has focused on reimbursement, via the Payment Systems Regulator’s (PSR) authorised push payment (APP) rules, whereas Australia is seeking to tackle fraud origination on telecommunications and big tech platforms.
The inclusion of building resilience to crypto scams reflects both the digital asset sector’s reputation for lawlessness and its move into the mainstream, with authorities attempting to bring it firmly within the regulatory perimeter.
As more financial organisations and consumers engage with digital assets, the threat of criminal activity will increase, so the NCA and FCA are acting responsibly in making this a priority.
The success of these approaches will become clear over time, but the latest UK priorities show that the authorities have a clear plan to tackle economic crime and are focused on threats that affect payments organisations and their customers.
