Every UK accountancy, bookkeeping and tax practice is an AML-regulated business — and supervision is being consolidated under a single FCA-led regulator. PracticeGuard gives a small practice the firm-wide risk assessment, client due diligence, policies, training and audit trail the Money Laundering Regulations demand, without hiring a compliance manager to produce them.
Accountants don't have a price-transparency problem like other professions — their entire regulatory exposure is money-laundering supervision, and it is intensifying on every front at once.
Register with a supervisor, keep a documented firm-wide risk assessment, run risk-based client due diligence, appoint a nominated officer (MLRO), maintain written policies and controls, and train staff. Every practice. Every year.
AML supervision of ~60,000 legal & accountancy firms is moving from 22 professional bodies and HMRC to a single FCA-led supervisor. Consolidation means consistent, sharper inspection — and a reason for every firm to re-examine its controls now.
HMRC took 798 formal actions in a single year (up >400%), fined 91 accountancy providers £538,916 in one half-year, and publishes the names of firms that fail. The sector is rated high-risk in the national risk assessment.
The same proven platform that runs AgentGuard's AML and customer due-diligence product — pointed at accountancy obligations, not estate-agency ones.
A guided, documented practice-wide risk assessment across client, geographic, service and delivery-channel risk — the foundation HMRC and your supervisor ask for first, kept current and version-stamped.
Risk-tiered CDD on every client, with sanctions and PEP screening against daily-refreshed lists and identity verification — simplified, standard or enhanced, with the decision recorded and dated.
Your AML policy, MLRO appointment, and controls produced from your practice's profile, e-signed with an audit trail, and re-issued when the rules or your firm change.
Short, quiz-checked modules for principals and staff — recognising suspicious activity, CDD, reporting to the NCA — with completion certificates and team progress tracking.
Every assessment, check, policy version, training record and SAR-decision in one place, exportable as an inspection pack — so when your supervisor asks, the file already exists.
An optional public verification page and embeddable badge showing your practice is AML-supervised, trained and screening clients — reassurance for the businesses and individuals you onboard.
PracticeGuard is built for the four-in-five accountancy and bookkeeping practices with a handful of staff and no compliance department — the firms that carry the full weight of the Money Laundering Regulations but can't justify enterprise AML software or a consultant on retainer.
PracticeGuard provides compliance tools and content; it is not a law firm or your AML supervisor and does not provide legal advice. Generated risk assessments, policies, screening results and training records help you meet and evidence your obligations under the Money Laundering Regulations 2017 — they support, but do not replace, your firm's own legal responsibility and your supervisor's requirements.