UK financial services enforcement in 2025 and looking ahead

During 2025, the FCA continued to focus its enforcement efforts in familiar areas (such as financial crime and market abuse), whilst taking steps to make its processes more efficient.

After a relative surge in FCA published enforcement activity in 2024, numbers dipped slightly in 2025 but not to the levels seen in 2023. The largest penalty was a substantial £44m, which is the largest fine since 2022. 

In this article, we discuss the key trends and focus areas that we saw in financial services enforcement in the UK in 2025, including the FCA’s progress on its aims of improving pace and transparency in its enforcement work and reducing the investigations caseload, and activity in the areas of financial crime, market abuse and other wholesale issues, consumer protection and individual misconduct. We conclude by looking ahead at what to expect in UK enforcement this year.