FCA: firms offboarded 238,396 suspected mule customers in 2025

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said on 23 September 2026 that 35 regulated UK firms reported offboarding 238,396 suspected money-mule customers during 2025, up from 184,935 in 2023 — a rise of 28.9% over two years. A money mule is someone who transfers or receives criminal funds on behalf of others; the FCA describes the activity as a form of money laundering. The firms surveyed included retail banks, building societies, challenger banks, payment institutions and e-money institutions.

The figures concern UK customers of those firms. People aged 18 to 39 made up the largest share of reported closures, but the fastest growth was among those aged 40 to 49. The reported closures reflect firms' suspicion of money-mule activity, not a confirmed finding of criminal conduct.

The publication matters now because it sets out how stolen money passes through chains of mule accounts before criminals cash it out — and because it lands alongside the Home Office's Fraud Strategy 2026–2029, published 9 March 2026, which envisages separate action from technology platforms. The FCA was explicit that a rising closure count does not, by itself, prove that money-mule activity is becoming more common.

What the 238,396 figure does and does not show

The FCA's own language shifts between "customers," "accounts" and "suspected mules." The clearest reading is that 238,396 suspected mule customers were reportedly offboarded by the 35 firms in 2025. Because some customers held more than one account, the number of accounts closed can be higher than the number of customers offboarded. The review records 114,984 accounts closed within their first year of opening in 2025 — only the subset of account-tenure records involving accounts closed within 12 months — and notes that tenure totals can exceed customer totals because a customer may hold multiple accounts.

Annual reported offboarding was:

Across the three years, firms reported offboarding 656,600 customers in total. It is not clear whether this total is deduplicated across firms or years. The FCA said the figures do not establish the prevalence of money muling among firms' customers, and that rising closures may reflect customer growth and improved detection by firms as much as any change in underlying criminal activity.

A related data source, Cifas's National Fraud Database, is not directly comparable across the period: Cifas introduced a dedicated "funds received for money muling" category in January 2025 and revised its filing criteria at the same time. Filing rates also fell relative to closures — 15.3% of offboarded customers were filed to the database in 2025, down from 17.4% in 2024 — because a database filing requires a different evidential threshold from a firm's decision to close an account on suspicion.

By firm type, retail banks and building societies accounted for 56.1% of 2025 offboarding, though their volume was 10.9% lower than in 2024. Challenger banks accounted for 33.0%. E-money institutions, a smaller base, recorded a 164.6% year-on-year rise in reported offboarding volumes in 2025. Personal customers made up 93.2% of offboarded customers in 2025, a volume 30.5% higher than in 2023; business-account offboarding was 10.0% above 2023 but 20.8% below 2024, with challenger banks responsible for 50.1% of reported business-account closures.

Who was most affected

Customers aged 18–39 accounted for 71.9% of reported suspected-mule offboarding in 2025. Within that, the FCA's annex splits the group into ages 26–39 (39.2% of the return, a count the press release gives as 91,073) and ages 18–25 (32.8%). The press release also gives a combined figure of 85,425 for customers aged 25 and under — a different banding from the annex's separate 18–25 and under-18 categories, so the two should not be read as measuring the same thing.

The sharpest percentage growth was among customers aged 40–49: reported offboarding reached 37,274 in 2025, up from 25,760 in 2024, a 44.7% annual rise and a 79.8% increase since 2023. Reported offboarding among the wider 40–59 age band rose 61.3% from 2023 to 2025 and 31.3% from 2024 to 2025. Under-18s made up 3.7% of the 2025 total, and under-16 offboarding fell to 1,343 in 2025 from 1,754 in 2024, though it remained 13.5% above the 2023 level.

Where gender was known, about two-thirds of offboarded customers were male. Gender was unrecorded, uncollected or undisclosed for 30.1% of 2025 records, up from 24.1% in 2024, which limits how far that split can be interpreted.

None of these figures are adjusted for the size of the customer population in each age group, so they show the composition of reported closures, not the risk of being caught up in mule activity relative to each group's size. The FCA has not published a population denominator that would allow that calculation.

How the money moved

In 2025 the FCA established a public-private cell with 22 regulated firms. The cell examined 140 cases spanning seven fraud types, tracing the highest-value payments through successive mule accounts until they could no longer be followed. Cash-out was usually concentrated between the second and fifth account in a chain, with the greatest concentration at the second account.

By the time funds reached that point, the FCA found they had typically been split into smaller, less conspicuous payments, which made later transfers harder to detect and trace. Card payments were the most common cash-out route in the cases reviewed; numerous low-value payments, alongside some higher-value spending at local businesses and retailers, could resemble ordinary consumer activity. International transfers and cryptoasset cash-outs were lower in volume but typically higher in value, with recurring international destinations in South Asia, West Africa and the Middle East. Some accounts recurred across different mule cases and fraud types before closure, which the FCA said was consistent with established criminal infrastructure rather than isolated misuse. The FCA did not state that the 140 cases are statistically representative of all suspected mule accounts, so these should be read as observed patterns rather than universal figures.

What the FCA expects from regulated firms

The FCA's expectations, set out alongside the 2025 findings, apply to the banks, building societies, payment institutions and e-money institutions it regulates. It expects firms to understand how funds move within their own institution and across other firms, to maintain controls proportionate to their risk, and to review those controls as mule patterns change. Firms are also expected to look beyond the first recipient account — considering linked accounts and wider transaction context — and to share information through lawful arrangements where appropriate.

An earlier FCA review, first published 19 October 2023 and last updated 3 December 2025, set out examples of detection tools firms may use in proportion to their risk, including facial recognition, device profiling, geolocation, behavioural biometrics, transaction analysis and machine learning. The FCA did not prescribe a single technology, and it warned that any models and alerts firms rely on must be understood and tested, not adopted uncritically.

The separate role of technology companies

The FCA's 2026 review states that banks, law enforcement, technology companies and consumers all have a part to play in preventing recruitment into money muling. It stops short of setting detailed obligations for technology platforms. Further platform-focused action is set out in government strategy rather than as FCA supervisory expectations. The Home Office's Fraud Strategy 2026–2029 envisages sharing intelligence with digital and technology businesses so they can strengthen their own trust-and-safety controls, restrict criminal social-media accounts and help remove the online infrastructure used to recruit mules and run fraud operations, with delivery through bodies including the Online Crime Centre. Readers should not treat this as an FCA rule: it is government strategy, aimed at a different set of firms from the regulated banks and payment providers covered by the FCA's supervisory expectations.

Risk context for customers

Being flagged as a suspected mule can mean an account is closed, sometimes within months of opening — 47.1% of the account-tenure records reviewed for 2025 involved accounts closed within their first year. The FCA treats money-mule activity as a form of money laundering, but closing an account on suspicion is a decision by the firm, not a finding of guilt, and does not by itself establish that the customer knowingly took part in criminal activity. The published material does not say how many of the 238,396 suspected cases led to a criminal investigation, charge or conviction, or whether firms distinguished witting from unwitting involvement. Nor does it describe how customers can challenge an account closure they believe was applied in error, or how firms manage the risk of false positives and financial exclusion.

What to watch next

The FCA has not set a date for further mule-specific publications in the material reviewed here. Its current expectations for regulated firms — on monitoring account chains, linked-account analysis and lawful information-sharing — remain in place, while the Home Office's Fraud Strategy 2026–2029 continues to set out separate government plans for technology platforms over its 2026–2029 delivery period. Readers wanting the original data and methodology should consult the FCA's published review and press release directly, rather than relying on secondary summaries.