Source · Select Committees · Treasury Committee
Recommendation 41
41
Paragraph: 172
The UK is a world-leading financial centre and needs an extensive legislative and regulatory regime...
Recommendation
The UK is a world-leading financial centre and needs an extensive legislative and regulatory regime to protect its financial system from money laundering. But it also needs enforcement and to ensure compliance with legislation. It is not obvious that either regulation or enforcement systems are robust enough or up to the job required of them. While the latest evaluation by the Financial Action Task Force of the UK’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing regime is positive, the Government should not be complacent. The FATF evaluation finds room for improvement in enforcement and compliance, and there is still much that the Government needs to do to make it more difficult to launder money in the UK. The latest FATF report is over three years old. In that time money laundering undertaken in the UK has not gone away: it has grown. The response to this threat seems slow and inadequate given the scale of the threats it poses.
Paragraph Reference:
172
Government Response
Not Addressed
HM Government
Not Addressed
We welcome the report’s recognition of the progress OPBAS has achieved. Over the last four years, under the supervision of OPBAS, the Professional Body Supervisors (PBS) have made significant improvements in their compliance with their obligations under the MLRs. OPBAS is now focusing on the effectiveness of the PBS AML supervision. As OPBAS states in its third report, while some PBSs are demonstrating good practice, OPBAS found during its 2020/21 assessments, differing levels of achievement and some significant weaknesses in the effectiveness of supervisory frameworks that PBSs have in place – which is informing our future work plan in this area so that effectiveness is improved. OPBAS expects PBSs to continue investing in, and strengthening their AML supervision, to have the greatest impact on the prevention of financial crime and that the PBS will continue to work closely with other authorities to make the UK an inhospitable place for criminals. OPBAS will continue to evolve its approach to supervision, using a wider range of methods to enrich its understanding of risks and drive more effective supervision by PBSs. It will continue to make robust interventions where PBSs do not make required progress. The FCA is engaging with HM Treasury as part of its review of the AML/CTF supervisory regime.