The FCA may slow down payments by electronic transfer to help combat rising fraud and financial crime.

In a speech today to the Financial Crime Summit in the City of London, FCA executive director Sarah Pritchard said that the FCA was looking at ways to slow down suspicious payments.

She said: “We are…working to support changes to faster payments, so that payments can be slowed down in cases of suspected fraud.”

Services such as BACS electronic transfer can mean almost instant movement of funds but fraudsters can use this to push people into making quick payments they later regret.

Ms Pritchard did not provide details of what mechanisms may be used but one possibility is putting some suspect payments on hold until they have been cleared as safe.

Ms Prichard made the comments today in a speech where she pledged that the FCA would make tackling financial crime one of the FCA’s “key super-charged priorities.”

The FCA will be stepping up its campaign against financial crime over the coming year, she said.

She said: “Reducing financial crime is one of our key super-charged priorities this coming year. We have devoted resources to strengthen the focus on financial crime systems and controls when we authorise firms, we are using data testing and tools to identify firms where there may be weaknesses, have unleashed technology to detect and take down scam sites and acted to fine and prosecute firms.”  

One step will be working with the Office of Professional Body Anti-Money Laundering Supervision (OPBAS). This will drive “more effective anti-money laundering supervision of lawyers and accountants” with the aim of stopping “professional enablers” of financial crime.

The pledges come amid signs that financial crime is spiralling out of control.

Fraud now accounts for 40% of all crime and is also linked to money laundering and more sinister activities such as human trafficking, terrorism and child exploitation. 

Ms Pritchard, FCA executive director of markets and international, said the FCA was “one of the most prolific enforcers globally of anti-money laundering rules, with more than one billion pounds issued in penalties since 2010. “

In 2022 the FCA removed more than 8,500 misleading adverts, 14 times as many as the previous year, she said.  

The watchdog also carried out 352 proactive assessments of sanctions in the last financial year – nearly 4 times as many as the previous year and more than 610 financial crime supervision cases were opened in 2022, an increase of more than 65% from the previous year.  

In terms of the Consumer, Duty she said the FCA was looking to see how firms are operating their financial crime systems with the Consumer Duty in mind.  

Ms Pritchard said the FCA would be taking a risk-based approached to financial crime rather than a tick-box exercise and would be using data from firms to spot emerging risks and evidence from whistleblowers and the like.