UK anti-money laundering and asset recovery strategy 2026–2029

The UK government has published its anti-money laundering and asset recovery strategy 2026–2029, setting the direction for the UK's response to money laundering and criminal asset recovery over the next three years. Alongside the UK Anti-Corruption Strategy and UK Fraud Strategies, this strategy forms part of the Government's overall approach to economic crime as will be set out in the forthcoming Economic Crime Plan 2026-29.

Measures proposed include:

• Structural reform of the UK's anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing supervisory regime (AML/CFT), reducing the number of supervisors from 25 to three.
• Review of how the future of financial payments will impact threats and addressing risks and opportunities presented by the growing use of stablecoins.
• Developing a policy roadmap for addressing risks and opportunities of privacy enhancing technologies in relation to cryptoassets.
• Review of the suspicious activity reporting (SARs) regime for opportunities to reduce low-value activity, including whether to raise the suspicion threshold in POCA and finalising implementation of the SARs Digital Service with AI-enhanced analytics.
• Develop an agreed problem statement regarding law enforcement speed of access to basic bank account information and a review of options.
• Use of the UK's FATF Presidency (2026–28) and G20 Presidency (2027) to promote reform of international AML standards to support a more risk-based approach and reduce low-value compliance activity.

Annex A to the strategy sets out a delivery plan, detailing key actions and milestones across 2026–29.

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