The Serious Fraud Office has released its 2025-2026 Business Plan: how does it stack up?

The UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) released its 2025-2026 Business Plan on 3 April 2025. This is the first Business Plan under Nick Ephgrave, who took over from Lisa Osofsky as Director of the SFO in October 2023. The Business Plan is the first step in Ephgrave’s five-year strategy, and the plan echoes the ambitions set out in the SFO’s Annual Report dated 30 July 2024, which we have written about previously here, and which presented a first glimpse of Ephgrave’s ambitions for the office.

The Business Plan provides a small snapshot of the SFO’s progress under Ephgrave, including:

• opening eight new investigations;
• presenting the first charge under Ephgrave’s tenure (referring to the collapse of Axiom Ince, which was brought within 15 months of the investigation opening); and
• listing five cases for trial in 2026. 

The plan focuses on several key areas that were identified in the prior year’s Annual Report, which are considered below.

The new failure to prevent fraud offence

The failure to prevent fraud offence is contained in the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 (ECCTA), which will be effective from September 2025. It applies to organisations doing business in the UK and those working within these organisations. An organisation can be prosecuted if fraud is committed by an associated person for that organisation’s benefit, and if the organisation did not have ‘reasonable procedures’ in place to prevent the fraud. This represents a significant expansion to economic crime offences in the UK. It is predicted that the new offence will bring with it an increase in the number of SFO investigations being carried out, particularly given Ephgrave’s focus on the investigatory stage and that he wants the SFO to be bolder.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, it is a prominent feature of the Business Plan. Ephgrave has indicated that after September (when the failure to prevent offence will be effective), the SFO will not shy away from pursuing those companies who fail to get their houses in order to deal with the new offence. It makes clear that the ECCTA and the failure to prevent fraud offence, specifically, will make it easier to prosecute organisations for economic crime offences. The onus has clearly been placed on organisations to spot possible fraud risks within their own organisations. Those who don’t manage to adequately assess and manage their risk under the ECCTA and review their fraud prevention and detection processes in readiness for September could face significant difficulties and the SFO is keen for industry to understand that.

The need to improve international cooperation

The Business Plan also acknowledges the international nature of serious economic crime and, therefore, the importance of international partnerships with other law enforcement and justice agencies worldwide. The SFO announced a significant step in this regard on 20 March 2025, when it announced that the UK, France and Switzerland will be forming a new anti-corruption alliance. 

Ephgrave, upon making the announcement, commented that: ‘The commitment we have made today reaffirms our individual and collective commitment to tackling the pernicious threat of international bribery and corruption, wherever it occurs.’ The SFO has clearly acknowledged that cooperation of this kind will be vital to combat fraud, which often contains a cross-border element. 

Incoming: new corporate guidance on the ECCTA and a focus on whistleblower incentivisation reform

Hot off the heels of the ECCTA has come the release by the SFO of guidance on corporate cooperation and enforcement relating to corporate criminal offending. This arrived on 24 April 2025 and was fairly groundbreaking in that it makes plain that, if a corporate self-reports to the SFO and cooperates fully, the SFO will invite the corporate to negotiate a DPA unless ‘exceptional circumstances’ apply. What is absent from the guidance is any illustration of what would constitute ‘exceptional circumstances’, but organisations will no doubt be encouraged to see the clear direction towards self-reporting and the benefits of doing so.

A dive into the meat of the guidance reveals a detailed framework for dealing with the process of self-reporting and makes clear what is expected by the SFO in terms of cooperation and the internal investigation conducted by the organisation, including pointers on what would be considered uncooperative conduct (minimising the extent of offending, or strategically delaying the delivery up of certain information, for example). In a move to potentially address the constant complaints against the SFO concerning delay, it also imports a commitment by the SFO to certain timeframes, dramatically accelerating the decision making points of whether: (a) to open an investigation (to be achieved within six months), and (b) to conclude the DPA negotiations (also to be achieved within six months of the invitation).

It may be said that the guidance is designed to address the SFO’s own failure to conclude sufficient DPAs, but there are clearly collateral benefits for organisations of clarity, speed, certainty, and predictability. Our sense is that this will certainly be a welcome development for organisations and their advisors in reaching decisions about self-reporting (particularly with the shadow of the ECCTA looming), who can now make those decisions with information and justification at hand.

In addition, the SFO is considering the incentivisation of whistleblowers, which we are expecting to hear more about later this year. Ephgrave previously told the House of Commons’ Justice Committee on 14 May 2024 that the UK should consider paying whistleblowers for providing evidence of wrongdoing. These payments would be made from any corporate settlement the whistleblower helps bring about by way of compensation for the risk they faced in doing so. 

This would be a huge step change in the UK, wherein we have long deviated from the approach taken in the US to compensating whistleblowers. Should the SFO be permitted to incentivise whistleblowers, this will place even greater pressure on organisations to ensure that they are fully compliant with all fraud prevention policies and procedures on the basis that those inside their organisation may be more willing to come forward where a significant payment might be available. This would arguably drive higher standards of corporate behaviour, which is why it could be an attractive proposition for lawmakers.

Improving efficiency

A key area for improvement identified in the SFO’s Annual Report was the need to improve its overall efficiency following criticism of the SFO’s handling of disclosures (which notably went awry in the Libor prosecutions, among others) and the speed with which cases progress from the investigation stage to a charge being brought. 

The Business Plan points to the use of modern resources such as artificial intelligence (AI) in streamlining the SFO’s efficiency. One might query why this technology, which has been used across legal practices for years, is only truly being embraced by the SFO at this stage. Disclosure has been identified as a key area of improvement for the SFO and, on 8 November 2024, it was announced that the SFO will receive an additional £9.3 million of funding to assist with tackling complex fraud, bribery and corruption. A key component of this funding was to expand and accelerate the use of technology to assist in regard to disclosures. It is hoped that this will provide an essential update to the SFO’s management of disclosures and provide a much-needed increase in efficiency in this area. Indeed, evidence that the use of the technology-assisted review (TAR) process has already increased the disclosure speed by 40% is a welcome sign that the extra funding provided has been put to good use. 

Ephgrave is also at pains to highlight that the Axiom Ince matter did not suffer any undue delay in making it from the investigation to the charging stage, which took 15 months. This is a far cry from the 10 years between the initial investigation and eventual conclusion of the prosecution of Jeffrey Cook and John Mason (a case in which we acted), both of whom ended up being acquitted of the principal corruption charge. Whether the relative speed of the Axiom case continues remains to be seen, but it appears to be a positive start to Ephgrave’s time at the helm.

Conclusion

Whilst it remains early in Ephgrave’s tenure as director of the SFO, the initial movement towards increased efficiency and increased powers for the office is a positive sign for the credibility of the SFO and its reputation on the international stage. 

With these increased efficiencies and powers comes the need for organisations to keep a firm eye on any new guidance published by the SFO in order to adequately prepare for the failure to prevent fraud offence becoming effective from September.

Equally, it appears that there may be some interesting developments in the whistleblower space this year, which could prompt a serious uptick in activity at the SFO if the regime is approved and is a success. Businesses will be waiting with keen interest for any updates in this respect and the SFO itself may be looking for further funding to deal with the potential increase in investigatory requirements.