In a speech at the Financial Conduct Authority's financial crime conference, chief executive Nikhil Rathi set out the FCA's current approach to a threat landscape he described as more organised, technology-enabled and cross-border, and argued that a system-wide response is needed rather than isolated firm-by-firm action. He said the FCA is focusing on three shifts: earlier and broader information sharing, greater use of data and detection technology, and deeper joint working across firms, regulators, government and law enforcement. He also said authorities cannot defend every threat equally and must prioritise the highest-risk areas, noting that the FCA's intelligence infrastructure has processed more than 52 million records. Concrete steps include joint work with the National Crime Agency and the National Economic Crime Centre on data fusion and a secure data pipeline. From June, the FCA plans to begin wider sharing of its intelligence with law enforcement through the Police National Database, starting with more than 5,000 records. Rathi said the FCA's analytics identified firms with potential anti-money laundering risks in the payments sector earlier than previous rule-based methods, and that the FCA and National Crime Agency have set nine economic crime priorities, with selected banks already piloting action plans that are producing law enforcement outcomes. He also argued that the post-EU payments regime should mirror the wider financial services model across authorisation, supervision and enforcement, and pointed to cross-border coordination through IOSCO and the recent finfluencer enforcement week, which involved 17 regulators from 14 countries and led to a guilty plea, nearly 40 warnings and more than 100 account takedown requests.

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