The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is the conduct regulator for financial services firms in the United Kingdom and one of the country’s two principal financial supervisors — the other being the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), which is responsible for the safety and soundness of systemically important firms. The FCA was established by the Financial Services Act 2012, which abolished its predecessor the Financial Services Authority (FSA) following widespread criticism of its supervisory approach in the lead-up to the 2008 financial crisis. The FCA is an independent public body, funded by the fees it charges to the firms it regulates rather than by government, and is accountable to HM Treasury and to Parliament. In the AML context, the FCA is the primary AML supervisor for the UK financial sector — including banks, building societies, payment institutions, e-money firms, investment firms, consumer credit providers, and cryptoasset businesses — and supervises these firms for compliance with the Money Laundering Regulations 2017 (MLRs).
The FCA also publishes an annually updated Financial Crime Guide, which provides extensive practical guidance on its expectations across all areas of financial crime compliance, and issues Dear CEO letters and portfolio-level communications to alert firms to emerging risks and supervisory priorities. Following the UK’s departure from the EU, the FCA has developed its own standalone AML supervisory framework, which broadly tracks the EU AMLD standards but increasingly reflects distinctly UK policy priorities — including a strong focus on the regulation of cryptoasset businesses and the reform of the UK’s suspicious activity reporting regime.
FCA website allow searching for regulated entities, therefore it serves as a source of valid information for KYC purposes.
FCA website: https://register.fca.org.uk/s/
