We have published our Q1 and Q2 Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) quarterly reports, which aim to provide inside insight and trends and provide feedback to submitters of SARs on the recorded data received.
The information in SARs is vitally important in the fight against financial crime. Good quality SARs allow us to better understand suspected criminal activity, ML / TF typologies, emerging threats, risks and trends.
SAR information is used to support the operational focus of the FIU and help inform the wider work carried out by other local competent authorities tasked with financial crime strategy development/ implementation.Submitters of SARs will be aware of changes made to the SAR template, which occurred on 1st February 2022. These changes allow for a more detailed analysis of information contained in a SAR by us and provides for better feedback on SAR data to industry.
The Q1 2023 report contains feedback as a direct result of those changes in areas such as consent requests, business declined information, and disclosure of criminal activity. Because of further changes implemented in April 2023, we delayed publishing the Q1 report to allow us to assess the quality of the data reporting before publishing both reports now.