UK money laundering amendment nears force as most firms say they are not ready

What happened

The Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Amendment) Regulations 2026, which revise the United Kingdom’s Money Laundering Regulations 2017, are in the final stage of parliamentary approval. HM Treasury laid the draft on 25 March 2026 under the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018, for approval by both Houses. As of 8 June 2026 the instrument has not yet been made: the official record shows no commencement date and no assigned statutory instrument number.

The timing matters because of how commencement is structured. Most provisions come into force 21 days after the day the regulations are made, which on Treasury’s expected schedule points to late June or early July 2026. A separate set of cryptoasset measures is held back to 1 February 2027. Those include new enhanced customer due diligence requirements for cryptoasset exchange providers, custodian wallet providers, and certain correspondent relationships, and a revised Schedule 6B that tightens oversight of changes in control of registered cryptoasset businesses.

Readiness looks thin. A VinciWorks survey reported that roughly six in ten regulated firms considered themselves unprepared as the June deadline approached.

Why it matters

The short runway is the story. A statutory instrument that commences 21 days after it is made gives a compliance function very little time between certainty and obligation, and the draft has been public since March. Firms that read “not yet made” as “not yet relevant” have built themselves a three-week implementation window for changes they have known about for months.

The split commencement is a planning gift if you use it. The general provisions land first. The harder cryptoasset and control-of-business changes are deferred to February 2027, which gives crypto firms a longer but finite runway. The analytical risk is reading the 2027 date as distant. Enhanced due diligence and ownership-change controls are structural, and they take more than a quarter to build and test.

Practitioner angle

• Pull the laid draft now and complete a clause-by-clause gap analysis against your current policies. Do not wait for the made version. The substance is set.
• Identify which obligations fall in the first commencement tranche, then assign owners and dates against a made-plus-21-days assumption, so you are ready whenever the signature lands.
• Crypto firms: start the February 2027 work this year. The enhanced due diligence and Schedule 6B control-of-business changes are not a January 2027 task.
• Brief senior management and the board on the timeline now, so the in-force date is not the first they hear of it.

The single most important step: run the gap analysis against the draft this week and stop waiting for the made date, because the made date starts a clock you cannot pause.