Regulations
By Evie Vavasseur
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900 Firms Now Under the Microscope. The FCA has sent an information request to roughly 900 Annex 1 firms. That's a big number.
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Unregulated Lending and Complex Structures. One specific area the FCA called out: unregulated lending through complex structures like special…
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What Regulated Firms Need to Do Now. The FCA isn't only talking to Annex 1 firms directly.
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The UK's Financial Conduct Authority is turning up the heat on Annex 1 firms. Unregulated lenders, safe custody providers, money brokers, and financial leasing companies are all…
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Annex 1 firms sit in a peculiar space. They're not fully regulated in the traditional sense, but they're still required to register with the FCA for anti-money laundering purposes.
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The core problem, per the FCA, is dependency. Firms have been leaning on their parent companies' financial crime controls rather than building their own.
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The FCA has sent an information request to roughly 900 Annex 1 firms. That's a big number. The goal is to get a detailed picture of what these firms actually do — their…
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Worth noting: the FCA didn't start from zero here. Earlier work with around 300 firms in late 2025 laid the groundwork.
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And the registration process itself is changing. The FCA is placing greater scrutiny on new applications from Annex 1 firms, and it's warned explicitly that the process may…
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More context: FCA Handbook API Goes Live, Cutting Compliance Costs for 50,000 UK Firms
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That kind of structural complexity is part of why generic, inherited compliance frameworks don't work.
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The broader AML landscape across financial services has been shifting for years. Regulators globally have pushed firms to move away from tick-box compliance toward something more…
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The FCA isn't only talking to Annex 1 firms directly. It's also reminding fully regulated entities — banks, brokers, and others — that they have their own obligations when…
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That's a meaningful ask. It puts compliance pressure not just on the Annex 1 firms themselves but on anyone in the financial system that touches them.
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No further details have come out about specific investigations or enforcement actions already underway.
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