The UK’s financial regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), is reportedly planning to recruit a specialist with a professional background in blockchain and cryptocurrency-related businesses.
The FCA says it wants to hire an intelligence associate with experience working in the digital asset industry, in order to address crypto-assets under the EU’s 5th anti-money laundering directive, the agency noted in a LinkedIn job advert, posted on February 6, 2020.
Commonly referred to as 5AMLD, the new law became effective on January 10, 2020. It aims to tackle serious illicit activities such as money laundering and terrorist
financing throughout Europe.
Although the UK has managed to finally leave the European Union (on January 31, 2020), the country’s authorities have to still pay close attention to the EU’s new cryptocurrency-related law. The FCA is now looking to employ a crypto and blockchain professional for its core intelligence team, which will be tasked with handling 5AMLD regulations of the nascent digital asset industry.
The job listing notes that the main duties of the new role will include offering intelligence support for supervision and enforcement-related matters, along with processing applications for companies in the UK’s financial sector.
The FCA has notably been quite active in the crypto-asset industry as the agency has issued operational licenses to large digital asset companies and has also been carefully looking into the industry. In July of last year, the FCA confirmed it won’t be regulating Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), which are two of the world’s largest digital currencies in terms of market cap.
The FCA’s recent move related to 5AMLD has come after the regulator revealed on January 10 that it would begin overseeing anti-money laundering compliance of digital currency-focused companies in the UK. The FCA is reportedly preparing to enforce a stricter set of laws for firms dealing in crypto-assets.