The opinions expressed here are those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of UK Finance or its members.

Only a few months remain until the UK’s new “failure to prevent fraud” offence comes into force.  

And recent indications from the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) suggest the force of its implementation will be significant. The SFO’s new business plan described the enforcement on 1 September 2025 as “a landmark moment” which “will widen the reach and breadth” of corporate fraud prosecutions.  

With this looming deadline (and the SFO’s commitment to strong action thereafter) in mind, many in the private sector may be wondering how they can best use the remaining time to prepare for the new offence. We set out below three top tips to help these organisations do exactly that. 

1. Run a rapid (and resource-efficient) risk assessment 

As with previous “failure to prevent” offences, the watchword for compliance with this offence is “proportionality”. In practice, this means that procedures should be linked back to the nature and extent of the risks faced, through a risk assessment.  

Conducting a full risk assessment for a new offence just months before its enforcement might seem like a tall order, but many firms will be able to work with what they have.

By reviewing existing risk-assessment outputs, for example, firms may be able to identify risk scenarios that focus on fraud being committed “for the benefit of the organisation or its clients”, as per the focus of new “failure to prevent fraud” offence. 

Many will find that existing fraud, bribery or sustainability risk assessments already take account of risks in this category (such as fraudulent mispricing, conflicts of interest, or greenwashing), and this data will provide an efficient starting point for their assessment of broader “failure to prevent fraud” risks. 

2. Get on board with the guidance (and mind the gap) 

A second key step in preparing for the new offence will be to establish “reasonable procedures”. 

The government guidance, issued in November, set out this list of procedures, which firms can adopt to defend themselves against a “failure to prevent fraud” case.

For organisations still getting up-to speed with the guidance, implementing the recommendations of a 50-page government document before September might seem ambitious. However, again, many will be able to leverage existing work and fill the gaps. 

As we covered in our recent podcast, the guidance on “reasonable procedures” to prevent fraud is based closely on previous guidance regarding “adequate procedures” to prevent bribery (2010) and “reasonable procedures” to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion (2017). 

On this basis, organisations coming late to the guidance will be able to conduct a gap analysis of its requirements against their existing procedures, and may well find that much of the necessary infrastructure (firm-wide risk-assessment, due diligence on associated persons etc.) has already been established to defend against these previous offences. 

3. Avoid a breakdown in communication (and training)

A third area in which firms can make rapid progress ahead of the deadline is communication.

Communication (including training) is one of the six key pillars of the “reasonable procedures” discussed above. Although embedding strong awareness across the organisation will necessarily take time, there are short-term communication-gains that organisations can make before the offence comes into force. 

This could include, for example, incorporating messaging on the new offence into existing training and communications, such as mandatory ethics and compliance training, onboarding training for new joiners, materials issued to third parties as part of the procurement process, and firm-wide communications issued by leadership. 

By incorporating even basic content on “failure to prevent fraud” into these existing channels, firms have the potential to reach a wide audience of relevant stakeholders in a short time, ensuring no one is in doubt about the organisation’s position on the new offence by the time it comes into force. 

What happens next 

In the short term, ongoing international conflicts (both military and economic) will continue to create the kind of uncertainty in which fraud and financial crime thrive, due to the increase in financial vulnerability and the need for split-second decision-making to obviate its effects. 

This means it will become all the more important, between now and September, for organisations to establish a robust anti-fraud framework swiftly, as set out above – not only to comply with a new UK offence designed to address the risk, but also to guard against this broader environment which could make the risk more likely to materialise.