The SRA has today published its annual anti-money laundering report.
In summary:
- Supervision (including inspections and desk based monitoring) is up at 545 (273 last year)
- File reviews have increased to 3,048 (1,245 last year)
- 78 enforcement actions (39 last year)
- SRA issued 44 fines totalling £556,832 (that’s over £1m of AML-related fines between the SRA and SDT)
- Common failures related to: Inadequate risk assessments (87 reports), inadequate policies, controls and procedures (61 reports) and source of funds (46 reports)
- During the last year the SRA started a three-year cyclical programme to review the outcomes of firms’ last independent audits carrying out further checks where audits found significant issues that had not been rectified by the firm.
Inspections and reviews found that:
- 22% of firms were fully compliant,
- 55% of firms were partially compliant and
- 23% of firms were non-compliant
Suspicious activity reports:
- 23 SARs submitted to the National Crime Agency (total value £74m)
- of all the SARs submitted by the SRA, 73% involved property conveyancing
- the value of 2 financial sanctions reports to OFSI under the Russia Sanctions Regime was £369k
The SRA’s work on sanctions:
- 343 firms sanctions controls assessed
- 55 inspections
- 1,087 guidance letters issued
Risks and controls:
- 60% compliant firm-wide risk assessments (up from 53%)
- 12% ineffective client/matter risk assessments (down from 51%)
