Money Laundering Regulations 2007, which come into effect on 15 December 2007, give the FSA responsibility for supervising the anti-money laundering controls of businesses that offer the following services:

  • Lending including among others, consumer credit; mortgage credit; factoring with or without recourse; and financing of commercial transactions (including forfaiting).
  • Financial leasing;
  • Money transmission services;
  • Issuing and administering means of payment (e.g. credit cards, travellers’ cheques and bankers’ drafts);
  • Offering guarantees and commitments;

  • Trading for own account or for account customers in:

    • Money Market instruments
    • Foreign exchange
    • Financial futures and options
    • Exchange and interest-rate instruments; or
    • Transferable securities
  • safe custody services;
  • Money broking;
  • Portfolio management advice;
  • Safekeeping and administration of securities;
  • Participation in securities issues and providing services related to such issues (this will include registrars); and
  • Advice to undertakings on capital structure, industrial strategy and related questions and advice as well as services relating to mergers and the purchase of undertakings.

Registration

Businesses that need to register can do so using the Registration Form. There are guidance notes that will help you to complete the form. Please note that if you are currently a registered business with the FSA for any other purpose, e.g. Appointed Representative, you may still need to register if you carry out any of the above services using the registration form.

Businesses that need to register should complete the form and post it to:

Permissions Department
The Financial Services Authority
25 The North Colonnade
London
E14 5HS

There is a registration fee of £100. Please include a cheque for this amount made payable to the "Financial Services Authority" with your application. If you do not include the cheque, your registration will not be complete.

The deadline for registration is 15 June 2008. Failure to register is an offence that potentially carries either a civil or criminal sanction.

Deregistration

Once registered, if a business no longer carries out one of the activities above, it can complete a Deregistration Form to inform the FSA of this.

Notification

If a business changes its core details (for example, it begins to offer another service that is in the list above, or it changes its address) it should use the Notification Form to let us know.

Further information

There are some circumstances where a business offering these services will not need to register with the FSA. Please see our Approach Document for further discussion about this.

We have prepared a glossary which offers definitions for many of the terms used on this page.


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