The FCA is in the process of contacting all relevant businesses about the economic crime levy and has asked firms to submit details of their annual revenue by April 1.
Firms that fail to respond to the data request will be fined an administrative fee of £250.
Even if a firm has applied to cancel it will still be obliged to submit regulatory returns until the cancellation is confirmed.
The economic crime levy, which is to be paid annually, will apply to all anti-money laundering regulated businesses from July of this year.
This includes credit institutions, financial institutions, auditors, insolvency practitioners, external accountants, tax advisers, independent legal professionals, trust or company service providers, estate and letting agents, and crypto asset exchange providers.
The FCA is responsible for collecting the levy on behalf of the government and impacted firms will see the levy appear on invoices from July.
The levy was first announced in the 2020 Budget with the objective of helping to tackle economic crime and prevent money-laundering.
The government previously said it believes it is fair and proportionate that as the sector most exposed to money laundering risk, the anti-money laundering regulated sector should be the principal contributor to the initiative that will “benefit them and help make the UK a safer place for them to do business”.
The levy will only be payable by firms defined as medium, large or very large by the FCA.
This means that firms with annual revenue under £10.2mn a year will be exempt from the levy.
Medium firms, those with revenue between £10.2mn and £36mn will pay a levy of £10,000.
Large firms, those with revenue between £36mn and £1bn will pay an annual levy of £36,000 and very large firms, those with annual revenue over £1bn will pay £250,000.
Despite these bands and the small firm exemption, the FCA has asked firms with annual revenue below £10.2mn to respond to its data request or risk paying the £250 fine.
Julian Pruggmayer, principal of Financial Risk Management has criticised this approach and said the regulator should be more targeted in its data collection.
“The FCA knows within seconds if fees are late, they must be able to focus these surveys on the firms to whom it should apply,” Pruggmayer told FTAdviser.
Pruggmayer said his first response when he received the email from the FCA was that it was a scam email.
