As the number of choices available to banking customers in the UK has grown to include non-traditional platforms, the pool of institutions that regularly report SARs has expanded and diversified. Terms such as ‘challenger bank’, ‘digital bank’, ‘FinTech’, ‘e-wallet’, ‘e-money’ and ‘cryptocurrency exchange’ are now commonplace within the SARs regime and the terminology used to discuss these reporters can be crucial to understanding the different services that they offer.

In this podcast, we chat with Mike Venn, the Group Head of Risk and Compliance with Modulr to try and get a better understanding of this area.

00:00 Introduction

01:23 Modulr introduction

03:21 Emerging, mobile-based firms

05:44 Clarification of services offered

07:11 Know Your Customer (KYC)

09:45 Identifying suspicious activity

12:05 Interaction with the UKFIU

14:03 Conclusion

Resources mentioned in this podcast

UKFIU pages on the NCA website:

https://nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/what-we-do/crime-threats/money-laundering-and-illicit-finance/suspicious-activity-reports

https://nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/what-we-do/crime-threats/money-laundering-and-illicit-finance/ukfiu

SARs In Action magazine issue 18:

https://nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/who-we-are/publications/625-sars-in-action-december-2022/file