Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what proportion of the 3 fines worth £289 million imposed in the financial year 2024/2025 by the Financial Conduct Authority under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 in response to money laundering breaches were (a) retained by the FCA and (b) applied for the benefit of FCA regulated firms under the Financial Penalty Scheme.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) does not spend the revenue it collects from fines. The FCA is required to pass revenue from fines it imposes by the FCA to the Treasury. The Treasury must surrender it to the Consolidated Fund and it is then part of the Government’s total revenues, used to pay for all Government spending on public services.

The FCA is permitted to deduct an amount equal to the costs of its enforcement activity from penalty receipts. The money retained for this purpose must be used for the benefit of regulated firms: the FCA achieves this through the Financial Penalty Scheme, which provides a rebate for relevant firms, reducing the fee that they must pay to the FCA in a given year. Under the Scheme, the firms on which any penalty was imposed in a financial year will not receive any rebate to their fees in the following financial year.

The FCA’s 2025 Fees and Levies Policy Statement sets out that it reduced the total fees payable to meet its annual funding requirement by applying the £71.6m using the financial penalty revenues it retained from 2024-25. Further information about how this is distributed among FCA-regulated firms can be found on the FCA’s website.