Criminals are innovating faster than law enforcement can respond, according to a warning from Therese Chambers, joint executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA.
In a speech to the International Bar Association at their Anti-Corruption Conference, she said that AI was making the threat from criminals “cheap, fast and invisible.”
She warned that traditional enforcement was, “expensive, slow and highly visible” and the regulator needs to adapt in order to close to gap.
She claimed that FCA investigations were moving faster than ever before, with 10 investigations reaching a public outcome within 16 months or less since July 2024, but that the regulator has to do more to, “prevent, protect and prepare” to cut harm off at the root.
The regulator is increasingly using the “credible threat of enforcement” in order to act faster and intervene earlier, acting within weeks rather than months or years.
Last year saw 369 voluntary 'outcomes' agreed with the FCA, with 124 more complex cases supported by the regulator’s interventions team. This compares to 13 interventions where the FCA had to exercise formal powers.
Ms Chambers said: “These outcomes are not separate from our enforcement work. They are our enforcement work – even if they don’t look like the kind you’re used to.
“They also speak to the volume and pace of what we are facing – much of which does not originate on our shores.”