Supervision tripled, enforcement rose nearly tenfold, and the share of firms rated fully compliant fell. The SRA’s own annual reports, lined up and read properly.
Companion to the SRA’s AML year, in numbers · compiled from the SRA’s published annual reports
One year’s report is a snapshot. Lined up, the SRA’s AML annual reports tell a direction-of-travel story that no single year shows: supervision industrialising, enforcement compounding, and the bar for “compliant” quietly rising. Every figure below comes from the SRA’s own published reports; the full white paper beneath sets out what it means for firms.
From 253 to 864 in five years. A firm’s odds of an inspection or desk-based review have more than tripled.
Broadly flat for six years, then nearly doubled in 2024-25. At first glance it appears the number has doubled; account for the SRA engaging with more than three times as many firms as five years ago and those headline numbers are deceptive, in real terms reports per engagement have actually gone down, while the total has obviously gone up. Nothing to see here, except that the SRA is doing far more of the looking, and that matters if you work in-house and care about compliance and risk.
Fourteen in 2018-19; 137 in 2024-25, nearly a tenfold rise, with Tribunal referrals returning to double figures on top.
Firms did not get dramatically worse in twelve months. The checking got deeper, the sample got bigger (512 firms became 833), and the bar moved. Read these two numbers together and the lesson is uncomfortable but useful: compliance ratings are partly a function of scrutiny depth, and scrutiny only deepens.
2023-24: 44 fines totalling £556,832. 2024-25: £292,133 in adjudicator fines, £661,200 in regulatory settlements and £545,650 at the Tribunal. Suspected criminal proceeds in the SRA’s own SARs almost doubled over the same period, from £75m to £148m, with conveyancing behind 73% of reports in both years.
Fewer firms, more scrutiny each: the arithmetic of rising inspection odds.
All figures are from the SRA’s published AML annual reports (2024-25, published 30 October 2025, and prior editions as cited within it) and the SRA’s own release accompanying the 2023-24 report. Where the SRA has restated a methodology between years, the figures are presented as published, and treated with corresponding care in the analysis. The 2025-26 report is due imminently; this page and its companion update when it lands.
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