Introduction
2025 marked a watershed in UK white collar crime enforcement and corporate compliance. With the introduction of the “failure to prevent fraud” offence, organisations face a new and more dangerous landscape of criminal liability. The year also saw significant regulatory shifts, including revised guidance from the Serious Fraud Office and a renewed focus on proactive enforcement, cross-border cooperation, and whistleblower protections. Against this backdrop, firms must navigate an increasingly complex environment, balancing robust fraud prevention frameworks, evolving regulatory expectations, and the need to foster ethical corporate cultures. This roundup explores the key reforms, trends, and challenges shaping the future of white collar crime in the UK, as originally noted in WilmerHale’s Investigations & Criminal Litigation thought leadership pieces published throughout the year.
Legislative Reform: The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 and the “Failure to Prevent Fraud” Offence
Overview
The most significant legislative development in 2025 was the introduction of the new “failure to prevent fraud” offence, which came into force on 1 September 2025, as part of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 (ECCTA), fundamentally altering the landscape of corporate criminal liability in the UK.1
Key Provisions
- Scope: The new offence applies to “large organisations” meeting at least two of three criteria: turnover over £36 million, balance sheet over £18 million, or more than 250 employees.2
- Strict Liability: If an associated person commits a fraud offence for the benefit of the organisation and reasonable prevention procedures were not in place, the organisation is automatically liable.
- Associated Persons: Liability extends to employees, agents, subsidiaries, and consultants, including those based outside the UK if the fraudulent act targets UK victims.
- Defences: Organisations may avoid liability if they were themselves the victim of the fraud, if the employee did not intend to benefit the company, or if reasonable prevention procedures were in place.
Fraud Prevention Framework
Organisations must demonstrate robust fraud prevention frameworks, informed by six principles:
- Top-Level Commitment: Senior management must actively support and resource anti-fraud measures.
- Risk Assessment: Regular, documented assessments of fraud risks across the business.
- Proportionate Procedures: Prevention measures tailored to the organisation’s risk profile.
- Due Diligence: Rigorous checks on employees, agents, and third parties.
- Communication and Training: Ongoing education for staff on fraud risks and response protocols.
- Monitoring and Review: Continuous evaluation and improvement of fraud prevention systems.
Impact
The new offence is driving a fundamental shift in corporate culture, requiring companies to conduct tailored risk assessments, overhaul compliance programmes, and invest in employee training to mitigate liability. Notably, ECCTA also expands the identification principle, making it easier to prosecute corporates for offences committed by senior managers acting within their authority, through a provision that came into force in December 2023.
Revised Corporate Cooperation Guidance
Against the backdrop of the new offence, the SFO published revised corporate cooperation guidance in April 2025, with the aim of clarifying expectations for companies under investigation.3 Despite clearer expectations, the guidance is unlikely to significantly boost self-reporting.
The revised guidance emphasised the importance of early engagement and full disclosure of wrongdoing, including providing relevant documents and witness accounts promptly. According to the guidance, “cooperation” now explicitly includes facilitating access to overseas data, waiving privilege over factual accounts, and ensuring transparency in internal investigations.
While the guidance outlines benefits (e.g., the potential to be invited to negotiate a Deferred Prosecution Agreement), it stops short of guaranteeing any outcome. As a result, companies should continue to carefully weigh the risks and benefits of self-reporting, as disclosure neither automatically protects against prosecution nor guarantees reduced penalties.
Enforcement Trends: SFO Reinvigoration and FCA Focus
Serious Fraud Office (SFO)
Under Director Nick Ephgrave, the SFO adopted a proactive and agile approach in 2025, aiming to shed its reputation for slow and ineffective investigations. Key developments include the increased use of dawn raids to secure evidence and disrupt criminal activity and an ambition to accelerate investigations and charging decisions.
The SFO has also sought to strengthen international anti-corruption alliances amid a backdrop of uncertainty as to the commitment of the Trump administration to tackling cross-border corruption.4 One of the most notable developments was the announcement of a new alliance between UK, French, and Swiss enforcement authorities. This partnership signals a growing trend towards cross-border cooperation in tackling financial crime, corruption, and sanctions breaches. The alliance is expected to facilitate intelligence sharing, joint investigations, and coordinated enforcement actions, raising the stakes for multinational organisations operating in Europe.
Mr Ephgrave has not wasted any opportunity to continue to advocate for the use of financial rewards for whistleblowers, inspired by US whistleblower incentive models, to increase the volume and quality of whistleblowing reports. He will be encouraged in this ambition by the UK Government’s announcement in the 2025 Budget that HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) will introduce a formal whistleblower reward scheme, which marks a significant shift in approach to tackling tax evasion and fraud.5
Under the HMRC scheme, whistleblowers who provide actionable information leading to successful enforcement may receive financial rewards. HMRC will also strengthen confidentiality protections and reporting channels to encourage participation.
Mr Ephgrave will also be encouraged by the UK Government’s 2025 Anti-Corruption Strategy (see more below), in which the Government pledges to “explore opportunities to reform the UK whistleblowing framework, including through potential financial incentives.”6
However, while financial incentives can encourage reporting, they cannot work in isolation. Effective whistleblower protection requires a comprehensive framework, as shown in the existing US schemes, including:
- Strong legal safeguards against retaliation.
- Clear reporting channels and confidentiality guarantees.
- Cultural change within organisations to support ethical behaviour.
Without these reforms, monetary rewards risk being seen as tokenistic. The SFO will monitor the success of the HMRC scheme and look to use any positive data to continue to advocate for financial rewards for whistleblowers.
Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)
The FCA continues its evolution as a data-led regulator commencing fewer but more impactful enforcement investigations, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics to detect anomalies and intervene early in cases of suspected financial crime. In March, the FCA published its latest strategy, outlining priorities for 2025 and beyond.7
The FCA’s strategy document highlights the following key themes:
- Consumer Protection: Continued focus on implementing the Consumer Duty framework, ensuring firms deliver good outcomes for retail customers.
- Market Integrity: Strengthening oversight of financial markets, with particular attention to resilience and transparency.
- Innovation and Technology: Support for responsible innovation, including guidance on AI and digital assets, while maintaining robust risk controls.
- Operational Resilience: Emphasis on firms’ ability to withstand disruptions, with stricter requirements for critical third-party providers.
The strategy is cause for cautious optimism that the FCA will adopt a more pragmatic stance, focusing on collaboration rather than purely punitive measures. Firms should expect increased scrutiny on governance, data management, and customer outcomes, and should proactively review operational resilience frameworks to ensure alignment with Consumer Duty obligations.
Over the course of 2025, the FCA’s approach to enforcement indicates the following trends:
- Fewer Investigations, Greater Impact: The FCA is opening fewer investigations but focusing on cases with the greatest deterrent impact, particularly in banking, crypto, and on internet platforms.
- Record Penalties: The FCA imposed over £186 million in fines in 2025, with landmark cases against major banks and financial institutions for failures in anti-money laundering controls and transaction monitoring.
- Naming and Shaming Policy Reversal: The FCA abolished its plans to “name and shame” firms under investigation, a move welcomed by many in the industry. The decision reflects concerns about reputational harm and the importance of due process, while also highlighting the FCA’s responsiveness to stakeholder feedback.8
- Non-Financial Misconduct Rules: The FCA introduced new rules on non-financial misconduct, expanding the scope of regulatory scrutiny to include issues such as bullying, harassment, and discrimination. These changes signal a broader commitment to ethical conduct and organisational culture, with implications for firms’ compliance frameworks and HR policies.9
Sanctions Enforcement and Compliance
In March 2025, Herbert Smith Freehills (as it then was), agreed to pay a £465,000 penalty on behalf of its Moscow subsidiary for failing to comply with Russia-related financial sanctions, marking the first enforcement action brought against a law firm for breaching the Russia sanctions.10 The penalty related to six payments totalling £3,932,392.10 made by the subsidiary to three designated Russian banks over a seven-day period in the lead-up to its closure on 31 May 2022.
The penalty was imposed notwithstanding the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI’s) acceptance that the breaches were accidental, the result of human error and made in the context of the hasty closure of the Moscow office in full support of UK policy objectives. The fact that the firm swiftly remedied the breach was not taken into account as a mitigating factor. The case underscores the importance of robust sanctions screening and compliance processes for professional services firms, and may have the unintended consequence from OFSI’s perspective of inhibiting future self-reporting and full cooperation with OFSI’s investigations.
In June 2025, the UK Government’s review proposed improvements to its sanctions regime. The review’s recommendations were largely procedural (better guidance and communication) rather than structural changes.11 The review did not propose concrete reforms likely to address resource constraints, enforcement delays, or clarity on licensing processes. As a result, companies face continued uncertainty and administrative burdens, with limited progress towards a more efficient and predictable sanctions framework.
Anti-Corruption Strategy
In December 2025, the UK Government published its 2025 Anti‑Corruption Strategy, framed around three core pillars: tackling corrupt actors, securing UK vulnerabilities, and enhancing global resilience, placing a heavy emphasis on the role played by “professional enablers”, including within the legal and financial sectors.12
The strategy proposes measures to enhance justice and accountability mechanisms, disrupt access to UK systems, and starve the flow of corrupt funds through transparency and asset recovery measures.
Transparency International UK welcomed the paper as the Government’s “most ambitious anti-corruption plan in years” but warned that “a strategy is only as good as its implementation”.13 Transparency international warned that the absence of caps on political donations and lower spending limits “[leaves] the UK’s political system vulnerable to the corrupting influence the strategy claims to tackle”, warning that UK politics is “woefully opaque compared to its international peers.”
Jury’s Out
Lord Leveson’s 2025 independent review of the criminal courts sought to address long-standing challenges in efficiency, access to justice, and case management in the context of the chronic Crown Court backlog of cases.14 Among the more notable proposals in the first part of the review, published in July 2025, was removing the right to trial by jury in cases of serious and complex fraud and removing the right to elect Crown Court trial for less serious offences.
In December 2025, the Government announced proposals to introduce “swift courts” that would see the right to elect a jury trial removed for cases with a likely sentence of three years or less, and those involving complex fraud.15 Worryingly for anyone with experience of the Magistrates’ Court, the Government also proposed to increase sentencing powers for the lower courts to 18 months’ imprisonment, perhaps rising to two years in future.
The proposals place an uncomfortable emphasis on the rights of “victims”, coming dangerously close to assuming the guilt of the accused, and prioritising speed over justice. The proposals undermine the rights of defendants without offering empirical evidence that the reforms would meaningfully reduce the Crown Court backlog. Instead of pursuing politically expedient measures like this, the Government should focus its efforts on adequately funding the justice system and taking steps to reduce the amount of court time lost to the failure to secure the attendance of defendants and witnesses at trial.
Conclusion
Looking ahead to 2026 and beyond, the UK’s approach to white collar crime is set to be defined not just by new laws but also by how organisations and regulators respond in practice. While the “failure to prevent fraud” offence and the expanded means of attributing corporate criminal liability have prompted immediate changes to compliance programmes, the true test will be in sustained implementation and cultural change. Enforcement agencies are signalling a willingness to innovate, embracing data analytics, cross-border partnerships, and new whistleblower incentives, but the effectiveness of these measures will depend to a large extent on ongoing investment and vigilance.
At the same time, proposals to reform the criminal courts and sanctions regime have sparked debate about the balance between efficiency and fairness, and whether procedural changes will deliver meaningful improvements. For legal and compliance professionals, the coming year requires staying abreast of evolving guidance, reassessing risk frameworks, and advising clients through a period of uncertainty and heightened scrutiny.
Footnotes:
2. These conditions apply to the financial year prior to the year of the underlying fraud offense.
15. See: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/swift-and-fair-plan-to-get-justice-for-victims
