Amendments to the UK Money Laundering Regulations
Parliament has approved the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Amendment) Regulations 2026, introducing 15 targeted reforms to strengthen the UK’s AML regime while reducing unnecessary compliance burdens on firms. The amendments came into effect on 30 June 2026.
The Law Society has covered the issues here.
The impact of these changes for our clients will not be earth-shattering. The most significant is that the high risk third country trigger for Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD) will now be limited to jurisdictions on the Financial Action Task Force 'Call For Action' List (see https://www.fatf-gafi.org/en/topics/high-risk-and-other-monitored-jurisdictions.html).
The other change of note is that another EDD trigger point has been changed from transactions that are "complex or unusually large" to “unusually complex or unusually large in each case given the nature of the transaction”.
We will be updating our retained clients' Quality Procedures Manuals in due course to address the above.