Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Insolvency Service’s expanded economic crime remit: Companies Act prosecutions, director bans, AI-led intelligence, crypto recovery and phoenixing action under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023

Published on: 18 August 2025

Published by a Law360 reporter

Legal News

Article summary

How is the Insolvency Service changing?

Dave Magrath, the Insolvency Service’s director of investigation and enforcement services, is guiding the agency into an expanded role set out in its new strategy to intensify investigations and enforcement. The plan features the hiring of 250 staff to support the Insolvency Service’s widening remit. That remit now reaches into prosecuting a broader array of economic crime offences against both individuals and companies. This expansion, revealed in July 2025, follows the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, which introduced over 100 additional offences the service can prosecute under the Companies Act 2006. The agency has also received extra funding to shoulder greater responsibilities.

In 2024, the Insolvency Service has helped secure convictions for 77 individuals, disqualified around 1,000 directors, and wound up 41 companies. The government has recently transferred enforcement of coronavirus (COVID-19) loan scheme cases to the agency, which had already been dealing with part of that caseload. Magrath is confident the expansion will enable the Insolvency Service not only to uphold the rules for failing companies, but also to recover the proceeds of crime when directors overstep the mark...

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