Whistleblowing

If you believe a firm supervised by the IFA is breaching the Money Laundering Regulations, you can contact the IFA confidentially. If information is provided to us on a confidential basis, we will take the appropriate steps to protect your identity.

Reporting

Firms supervised by the IFA

The Money Laundering Regulations 2017 requires a professional body supervisor to take effective measures to encourage its own sector to report breaches of the provisions of the regulations to it.

To assist the IFA with your AML concern, please complete the IFA complaints form and provide as much information as possible, together with any documentary information. The completed complaints form and supporting information should be sent to [email protected]  Further information on our complaints process is available on making a compliant.

Alternatively, if you know or suspect that an IFA member, student, affiliate or member firm (or their employee(s)) is involved in dishonest or serious misconduct or are unsure about whether you should raise a concern, you may want to contact the IFA by email [email protected]  or phone +44 (0)20 3567 0681 to report your concerns.

How we will use the information
Depending on the information you have provided, we may take different types of action in the future, including:

  • keeping the information for future use;
  • using the information to supervise a firm more closely; or
  • using the information as part of a formal investigation and disciplinary process of a particular firm.

How will we keep you informed?
We will write to you to confirm receipt of your information within five working days of receipt and may continue to write to you throughout the process.

Firms not supervised by the IFA

If you come across an accountancy firm or trust and company service provider, that does not appear to be supervised under the Money Laundering Regulations 2017 or appears to be ignoring the regulations and isn’t supervised by the IFA you can:

Sources of whistleblowing guidance

  • IFA Code of Ethics, in particular guidance on 'non-compliance with laws and regulations', commonly known as NOCLAR.

If a professional accountant becomes aware of actual or suspected NOCLAR they must first establish whether any legal or regulatory obligations are triggered, such as making a Suspicious Activity Report for suspicions of money laundering.

The accountant must also consider any legal prohibitions on making any further disclosure, such as the laws on tipping off which prohibit disclosure of the fact that a SAR has been made, if such disclosure could prejudice an investigation. Once legal and regulatory responsibilities have been considered, the accountant should consider what other actions to take, dependent on their role.

  • Protect (formerly Public Concern at Work)

Protect is a charity concerened with whistleblowing issues. Advice line offers free and confidential advice about misconduct at work to anyone who is not sure whether or how to raise their concerns. Protect aims to help enquiries to identify how to best raise the concern while minimising any risk to the whistleblower and maximising the chances for misconduct to be properly addressed.