Economic Crime Levy - one year on

Companies House now has new powers to help disrupt economic crime and we’ve taken an enhanced intelligence role in government. We have greater powers to analyse the information we receive, to share data with partners and to identify suspicious activity on the register.???

The Economic Crime Levy

The Economic Crime Levy is a charge levied on firms which are regulated under the Anti Money Laundering regulations. Alongside the work to implement the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act, we’ve secured additional funding via the Economic Crime Levy. This will help us play a greater part in the government’s Economic Crime Plan 2 objectives which sets specific objectives for Companies House.?

?These objectives are to:?

• reduce money laundering and recover more criminal assets
• combat kleptocracy and drive down sanctions evasion?

• cut fraud?

Following our successful bid with The Insolvency Service , we secured ￡20 million joint funding allocated across 3 years. This means we can build our intelligence capability to become a key disruptor of money laundering activities.??

?We received our first allocation of funding from the Levy in April 2023, so we’ve now completed our first year of investing this money across Companies House to develop our intelligence-led activities.???

How we're investing the Economic Crime Levy

In the first year of our Economic Crime Levy funding, we’ve focused on the activities that will benefit our core objectives under the?Economic Crime Plan?- those of improving the register’s integrity and embedding Companies House in the national anti-money laundering ecosystem.??

?We’ve used funding from the Levy to invest in developing our intelligence-led approach. In line with our objectives under the?Economic Crime Plan 2, we’ve recruited experienced intelligence colleagues and invested in digital tools and products to support their work to identify and analyse suspicious activity on the register. In the long term, this will improve the integrity of the register and help prevent companies and others from performing or facilitating unlawful activities using UK corporate structures.?

We’ve also invested in our data science and data storage capabilities. This means we can be more proactive in sharing intelligence with our key partners. This work is contributing to disrupting economic crime and supports the work of the National Economic Crime Centre (NECC) . It has received extremely positive feedback from lead partners.?This is a long term and strategic investment for Companies House.??

?To further develop our intelligence knowledge and presence across the UK anti-money laundering network, funding from the Levy is also being used to create new dedicated roles to work closely with key partners. This is a new approach for us at Companies House and is a really important step in further developing our cross-network relationships.??

?An important part of our funding commitments was to grow our relationship with the The Insolvency Service as they take on more of our enforcement work. This is a great opportunity to collaborate to help disrupt money laundering. In the future, the Insolvency Service will take a greater role in enforcement of our offences. ??

Martin Swain, Director of Intelligence and Law Enforcement Engagement at Companies House, said:?

It's great that Companies House has been able to partner with the Insolvency Service to get funding through the Economic Crime Levy. It's allowing us to develop our capacity and capability to understand the increasing threat of money laundering through UK companies. Money laundering allows criminals to legitimise money that has often been obtained through some of the worst crimes. Playing a greater part in combatting this is a major step forward for Companies House.??

Next steps

We'll soon publish our inaugural Strategic Intelligence Assessment on GOV.UK. This was commissioned with funding from the Economic Crime Levy and developed with input from numerous law enforcement agencies and key partners, nationwide.

The assessment sets out the key threats that we’ll focus on disrupting through our intelligence activities, working very closely with our colleagues in data and analytics.???

Year 1 of our Economic Crime Levy funding has been extremely busy and it’s great to see the positive impact that the funding is already having on elevating our intelligence-led capabilities.??

We’re looking forward to building on our achievements as we head into year 2.?We’ll continue to prioritise activities that will contribute to us being key disruptors of economic crime and helping to prevent abuse of UK corporate structures to facilitate money laundering. ?

If you want to understand more about the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act and the changing role and purpose of Companies House, visit the changes to UK company law website.?