The Consultative Committee of Accountancy Bodies has published its Economic Crime Manifesto detailing areas the government should prioritise to ensure that the UK maintains and builds on its resilience against economic crime.

One of the priority areas detailed in the manifesto is reform of Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) and intelligence sharing so that intelligence is shared as effectively as possible including calls for a two-way sharing mechanism to enable law enforcement to share new and emerging intelligence with professional body supervisors.

In addition, the manifesto stresses the importance of ongoing funding of the government’s Economic Crime Plan actions highlighting the need for a wider funding model to include large businesses from outside the regulated sector.

Further reform of modern slavery legislation is also underlined as a priority area, which argues for stronger provisions including clear culpability when companies fail to preserve adequate procedures to prevent modern slavery within their supply chains.

Lastly, the manifesto calls for comprehensive action to tackle financial illiteracy within society including education to cover understanding of personal finance and awareness of the techniques used by fraudsters. 

ICAEW as a member of the Consultative Committee of Accountancy Bodies (CCAB), contributed to the development of the manifesto, which supports ICAEW’s key strategic priority of enhancing trust in the profession.

Sophie Wales, Director of Trust and Ethics at ICAEW commented, “The government is quite rightly dedicating resources to tackling economic crime and a great deal of progress has been made on the Economic Crime Plan actions since the last CCAB manifesto. 

“The areas highlighted in the latest manifesto are important to ensure that progress continues to be made in key areas. As criminals become increasingly sophisticated, law enforcement and the regulated sector must work ever more closely together to detect and disrupt criminal activity.”