FCA Financial Crime Guide (FCG) October 2025 Edition
- Issuing authority
- FCA
- Effective date
- October 2025 current edition
- Scope
- United Kingdom
Key requirements
How the FCA expects regulated firms to handle financial crime. Real examples of what good and bad practice look like in governance, risk assessment, CDD, EDD, ongoing monitoring and SARs. The October 2025 edition adds expectations around transaction monitoring effectiveness and AI use. If you're FCA-supervised, this is required reading.
Quick Summary
The FCA Financial Crime Guide helps firms understand what the FCA expects when managing financial crime risks. It provides practical guidance and real examples of good and poor practice covering areas such as governance, risk assessments, customer due diligence (CDD), enhanced due diligence (EDD), transaction monitoring, sanctions, fraud, and suspicious activity reporting. Although it is not law, many FCA-supervised firms use it to strengthen their financial crime controls.
What is it?
FCA Financial Crime Guide is a practical handbook for preventing financial crime. Instead of simply explaining the rules, it shows firms what good AML systems and controls look like and highlights common weaknesses that the FCA has identified during supervisory work.
Who does it apply to?
- FCA-authorised firms
- Banks
- Payment institutions
- Electronic money institutions
- Investment firms
- Insurance firms
- Cryptoasset businesses supervised by the FCA
Why does it matter?
The guide helps firms understand what the FCA expects in practice, not just what the law requires. It uses real supervisory findings and examples to show how firms can improve their financial crime controls and reduce the risk of regulatory action.
What should firms do?
- Review the FCA Financial Crime Guide alongside their AML policies and procedures.
- Compare their financial crime controls against the FCA's examples of good and poor practice.
- Review governance, customer due diligence, enhanced due diligence, transaction monitoring, and suspicious activity reporting processes.
- Update internal controls where weaknesses are identified.
- Train staff on the FCA's expectations and monitor future updates to the Guide.
AboutAML Breakdown
FCA Financial Crime Guide is so useful is that it doesn't just tell firms what they should do. It also shows how good AML controls work in practice. For example, the Guide includes real examples of strong and weak approaches to customer due diligence, transaction monitoring, governance, and financial crime controls. This helps firms compare their own compliance programmes with the FCA's supervisory expectations and identify areas that may need improvement before a regulatory review or inspection.