Supervisory authority
A supervisory authority is the body responsible for overseeing AML compliance within a particular sector. For accountants not belonging to a professional body, the supervisory authority is HMRC. Members of recognised professional bodies (ICAEW, ACCA, CIMA, and others) are supervised by those bodies instead. For law firms in England and Wales, the supervisory authority is the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), with parallel regulators in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Supervisory authorities set standards, conduct reviews, and can impose sanctions.
your supervisory authority may conduct desk-based reviews or on-site inspections. They will ask to see your firm-wide risk assessment, client files, policies, and training records.
Other terms that go with Supervisory authority
In AML, risk assessment operates at two levels. A firm-wide risk assessment identifies the overall money laundering risks facing a practice — covering client types, services offered, geographies, delivery channels, and funding sources. A client risk assessment scores an individual client as low, medium, or high risk and determines what level of due diligence to apply.
Record keeping is the legal obligation under MLR 2017 to retain CDD evidence, risk assessments, screening results, transaction records, policies, training records, and suspicious activity decision logs for a minimum of five years after the client relationship ends. Records must be retrievable and suitable for inspection.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority is the independent regulator of solicitors and law firms in England and Wales. It is the supervisory authority under MLR 2017 for SRA-regulated firms — issuing AML guidance, conducting thematic and on-site reviews, and imposing fines, conditions, or strike-offs for failures. SRA fines for individual AML breaches can reach £25,000; firm-level fines can exceed £250m for traditional firms (lower caps apply to alternative business structures).
The Legal Sector Affinity Group is the umbrella of UK legal sector AML supervisors — including the SRA, Bar Standards Board, CILEx Regulation, the Law Society of Scotland, the Law Society of Northern Ireland, and the Council for Licensed Conveyancers. LSAG publishes the consolidated AML guidance for the legal sector, which is the practical reference SRA inspectors use to benchmark firm practice.
Put Supervisory authority into practice with Certivus
Knowing the term is the first step. Certivus gives you the workflows — client intake, CDD, EDD, PEP and sanctions screening, audit-ready records — to apply it across every client.
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