SFO publishes its annual business plan: "both scrutiny and expectations of companies will increase"

The UK's Serious Fraud Office (the "SFO") has published its Business Plan for 2025/6 (the "Plan"). The Plan sits within the SFO's wider five year strategy (which we discussed in our previous post) (the "Strategy"). 

The Plan states that "both scrutiny and expectations of companies will increase" in the current national and international landscape, describing the forthcoming offence of failure to prevent fraud as "a landmark moment which will widen the reach and breadth of prosecutions". More on this offence can be found here.

In his foreword to the Plan, Nick Ephgrave QPM highlights that the SFO is already seeing successes following the launch of the Strategy, including creating capacity to open eight new investigations, charging the first case under his tenure as Director (charges relate to the collapse of Axiom Ince and were brought within 15 months of the investigation being opened), and the fact that the SFO already has five cases listed for trial in 2026.

In the period covered by the Plan, the SFO intends to deliver a new case management system to further streamline its casework, and will launch refreshed corporate guidance covering failure to prevent fraud. The Plan also repeats key elements of the Strategy that have previously been the focus of public commentary, such as the further development of technological tools and the SFO's desire to progress initiatives relating to the incentivisation of whistleblowers. In relation to the former, the press release accompanying the Plan confirms that operational divisions of the SFO will begin rolling out Technology Assisted Review in relation to their review of documents, a tool which may already be familiar to many companies that have been involved in investigations and other document review exercises.

The Plan confirms that this year will see the delivery of the SFO's "prevention programme". This was described in the Strategy as a pilot programme to test new prevention methods to "cut fraud, bribery and corruption off at the source", although the Plan does not elaborate further on what this programme will involve. It also refers to a plan to further strengthen the SFO's covert surveillance activities and to develop and maximise the agency's cryptoasset investigation capabilities which may result in a continued increase in the number of investigations opened.

Companies should continue to monitor the implementation of the Plan (and the Strategy more broadly), and should carefully review any forthcoming guidance from the SFO; in the event that fraud or corruption issues arise internally, an understanding of the SFO's position and stated approach can prove critical when considering how such issues should be addressed.