Financial crime is the broad category of unlawful conduct connected with money, financial services or markets. Rather than a single offence, it groups together several distinct regimes that firms must manage as part of a coherent control framework. Understanding the regulatory meaning matters because the FCA’s rules require firms to counter financial crime as a defined objective, not merely to comply with individual statutes in isolation.
The regulatory definition
For UK regulatory purposes, financial crime is defined in section 1H of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 in the context of the FCA’s integrity objective. It captures any kind of criminal conduct relating to money or to financial services and markets, and expressly includes fraud or dishonesty, misconduct in or misuse of information relating to a financial market (market abuse), handling the proceeds of crime, and the financing of terrorism. This deliberately wide framing lets the FCA address new and evolving threats.
The main categories and the Financial Crime Guide
In practice, financial crime control spans fraud, bribery and corruption (Bribery Act 2010), market abuse (UK MAR), sanctions evasion, money laundering and terrorist financing (MLRs 2017, POCA 2002, Terrorism Act 2000) and data-security failures that enable crime. The FCA’s Financial Crime Guide consolidates expectations across these areas, sitting alongside the binding requirement in SYSC to maintain effective systems and controls. It offers self-assessment questions and examples of good and poor practice that firms use to benchmark their programmes.
Who it applies to
All FCA-regulated firms, which must maintain systems and controls proportionate to their financial crime risk and train staff accordingly.
Related terms
AML/CFT, MAR and financial sanctions.