Conveyancers are still facing big fines for AML breaches.
In fact, the majority of the decisions published by the Solicitors Regulation Authority in the first half of 2026 have referred to conveyancing, with penalties ranging from £1,800 to £32,000.
The largest fine—£32,106—was handed to a Launceston-based law firm for multiple breaches related to source of funds, CMRA, and internal policies and procedures.
Risk assessments have been identified as the biggest area of weakness, both client matter risk assessments (CMRA) and firm-wide risk assessments (FWRA). Data handling has also been cited.
The SRA has also been investigating historical offences, with some cases as far back as 2011 being revisited. That means time is no longer a defence: the mistakes firms make today could come back to haunt them fifteen years later.
Common mistakes
The SRA identified clear areas of failure common to many of these cases, notably:
- Missing, late, or undocumented risk assessments, some completed retrospectively.
- Weak, poorly evidenced source of funds checks.
- Inadequate and out-of-date policies, using generic templates and not tailored to specific risks.
What links these failures is not effort but structure. In almost every case, the firm was doing compliance work, it just could not evidence it, tie it to the specific matter, or show it had been done at the right point in time.
Generic templates, retrospective sign-off, and disconnected tools mean the audit trail is not being built alongside the matter.
The SRA now treats that gap as a substantive failure.
Building the infrastructure
Kord builds the infrastructure firms need to shore up their compliance.
It provides the tools and the data to create accurate risk assessments reflecting genuine areas of risk specific to each firm and each matter.
It has access to enhanced data insights that can be used to judge each client, allowing firms to go beyond the usual checks and gain a more holistic understanding of risk. And it checks source of funds through open banking. This provides a clear look at the origin of funds for each transaction, with no risk of tampering, and a built-in audit trail.
Kord empowers firms to get a complete overview of their clients, so they can put the right policies in place to protect them from risk, both criminal and regulatory.
With Kord, firms can underpin those policies with trusted data and powerful tools that build a layer of trust underneath everything they do.
To find out more, get in touch with Kord today.
