Home › Financial advisers and mortgage brokers › Consumer Duty, the FCA and client data
Consumer Duty, the FCA and client data
Suspicious activity report with a consent request in an advice firm: the seven working days, the 31-day moratorium and what you can say to the client meanwhile
How the seven working day notice period and 31 day moratorium run after an advice firm asks for consent, with a December 2026 calendar and tipping off limits.
Most advice firms will never make a report to the National Crime Agency. The one that does is usually in the middle of something: a client has asked for a withdrawal, a transfer or a payment out, the adviser has a suspicion about where the money came from, and the firm has reported it and asked for consent to go ahead. Then the question is how long the firm has to hold still. This guide counts it.
It covers the clock only. Whether to report, and what to put in the report, is for the firm's nominated officer, who is the money laundering reporting officer, and not the adviser or paraplanner who raised the concern.
The clock in the Act
When a firm makes an authorised disclosure and asks for consent to a transaction, section 335 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 gives the authorities a notice period of seven working days, starting with the first working day after the disclosure. If no refusal arrives within it, the firm is treated as having consent and may carry on.
If a refusal does arrive inside those seven days, a moratorium period of 31 days starting with the day the refusal is received begins. If it ends without a further refusal or court order, the firm is treated as having consent.
A working day is defined narrowly: not a Saturday, a Sunday, Christmas Day, Good Friday or a bank holiday in the relevant part of the UK. Counting calendar days is the usual mistake.
A worked December
A consent request is made on Wednesday 16 December 2026.
- Day one is Thursday 17 December. Then Friday 18, Monday 21, Tuesday 22, Wednesday 23 and Thursday 24 December: six working days.
- Friday 25 December is Christmas Day. Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 are a weekend. Monday 28 December is the substitute bank holiday for Boxing Day.
- The seventh working day is therefore Tuesday 29 December 2026, five calendar days later than a firm counting seven weekdays would expect.
If a refusal reaches the firm on 29 December, the 31 days start that day and run to Thursday 28 January 2027. Section 336A allows a court to extend the moratorium, in steps of no more than 31 days, for up to 186 days in total after the first 31. That would take it to Monday 2 August 2027, which is 217 days from the refusal. An extension needs an application by a senior officer before the current period ends and a court satisfied that the investigation is being carried out diligently and needs the time.
The client's money is not the firm's to move in that time. The firm does not act on the instruction, and the client may chase.
What you can say to the client
Very little, and this is where firms go wrong. Section 333A makes it an offence for someone in the regulated sector to disclose that a report has been made, or that an investigation is contemplated or under way, where that is likely to prejudice an investigation. The maximum on indictment is two years in prison, a fine, or both.
So the client is not told about the report, the request for consent or the moratorium. The adviser does not explain the delay by reference to any of them. What the firm can do is give an ordinary, true reason for a delay that does not reveal the report, and agree the wording in advance with the nominated officer. It should not improvise on the phone. The file note should record who said what and when, using the same discipline as the file check expects of any other client conversation.
What goes on the file
The identity and due diligence records under regulation 28 of the Money Laundering Regulations 2017 are kept for five years from the end of the business relationship, with a ten year cap on some records under regulation 40. The report itself and the nominated officer's reasoning are held separately from the client file, so that an adviser or a paraplanner opening the client file does not see them. The retention guide sets out how that period interacts with the other periods the firm already has to keep.
Where the identity check was done electronically, the e-signature guide covers when that counts as an independent, reliable source under regulation 28.
Checks that can be made today
- Does the firm have a named nominated officer, with a deputy for when they are away over Christmas?
- Does every adviser and paraplanner know to pass a concern to them and not to raise it with the client?
- Does the firm have a pre-agreed neutral holding line for client queries?
- Is there a calendar that counts working days with bank holidays, not weekdays?
In the firm
An AI Compliance Clerk set up by Overlyft can keep that working-day calendar, put the notice period and moratorium end dates on the nominated officer's diary the day a request is logged, and flag instructions on a held file to the adviser as "hold, see nominated officer", without saying why. It never decides whether to report, never sees the content of a report and never writes to a client about it. Not legal or regulatory advice.
Where this comes from: Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, section 335 (seven working days starting with the first working day after the disclosure; 31 days from notice of refusal; working day defined to exclude weekends, Christmas Day, Good Friday and bank holidays), section 336A (court extension, no more than 186 days in total after the 31 day period) and section 333A (tipping off, up to two years on indictment), all on legislation.gov.uk and read 2026-10-05; Money Laundering Regulations 2017, regulations 28 and 40, read 2026-10-05. The December 2026 dates were counted by script on 2026-10-05.
AEO Lookup editorial team
We write practical guides for people who run small UK firms, and we check every fact against its source on the date shown. Read how we review, or tell us if something has changed.
