This week the UK Government announced a consultation on, amongst other things, a whistleblower reward scheme for the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), the UK government department responsible for investigating and prosecuting serious fraud and corruption cases (click here).
UK regulatory and enforcement bodies currently offer relatively little in the way of whistleblower incentives. The topic of whistleblowing in the UK context has been on the rise in recent years, and most recently came to prominence with the death of a whistleblower who had provided information to, amongst other institutions, the FCA, the UK financial market regulator (click here).
Unlike several regulatory and enforcement agencies in the US, the UK has largely avoided implementing whistleblower incentive schemes. Under such schemes, whistleblowers are usually eligible for cash awards where their information, and subsequent cooperation, leads to a successful enforcement outcome. This is showing signs of changing, however. HMRC, the UK’s tax authority, recently launched a strengthened reward scheme following the UK Government’s November 2025 Budget, and the FCA has also indicated that it is considering reviewing its position on such awards. This week’s consultation announcement on the potential adoption of a whistleblower reward scheme for the SFO is a significant development in this context.
The consultation itself is part of a broader package of whistleblower reforms primarily focussed on whistleblower protections under the Employment Rights Act 1996 (click here) with the SFO element being relatively small. Nonetheless, the commentary below focuses on the latter. Those interested in the Employment Rights Act element are advised to address the consultation directly.
Chapter 11 of the consultation document (click here) is concerned with the proposed SFO whistleblower reward scheme. The consultation discusses this independent review published in July 2026 conducted by Jonathan Fisher KC. Fisher was appointed in 2023 by the UK Government to lead the first independent review of fraud since 1986, examining whether the UK’s criminal disclosure regime and existing fraud offences were still fit for the digital age.
Fisher made four recommendations relevant for this topic (see page 28), including Recommendation 15 which involves setting up a financial reward scheme for SFO whistleblowers, along with several issues to consider when designing such a scheme. The motivation to establish a reward scheme, according to the consultation document, is due to the success of similar such schemes in jurisdictions such as the US and Canada where they have increased the “quantity and quality of reporting of corporate misconduct, such as fraud, bribery and money laundering”.
The consultation document also acknowledges the recent shift in the debate on whistleblower rewards. The consultation notes that most whistleblower reward schemes operate by paying whistleblowers a percentage of the funds recovered as a result of the information they provided, often in the range of 10% to 30%, and usually do not impose a cap on the value of rewards with some exceptions. The UK government supports the introduction of such a scheme for the SFO and is looking for views on its design.
The SFO section of the consultation comprises 13 questions (i.e. questions 31 to 43) split across four categories. The first relates to structure and funding model, where the government proposes that, to qualify for a reward, information provided by a whistleblower must be both significant and original and must lead to a successful enforcement outcome against a company, and any reward would be funded from a proportion of the fine paid by the company. The government is also considering whether the SFO should be required to publish an annual report on the scheme. The second relates to eligibility for rewards, where the government proposes bespoke eligibility criteria for the scheme which could exclude those with a legal duty to report, those complicit in the wrongdoing, those with serious criminal convictions, authorised covert sources, or anyone who obtained the information dishonestly. It is also considering whether people who first reported to another UK or overseas authority should qualify once their information reaches the SFO.
The third relates to determining the size of a reward, where the government proposes rewards be calculated as a percentage of the financial penalty (much like schemes in the US and the newly revised HMRC scheme). The government also suggests that, where multiple individuals provide different pieces of qualifying information, the total value of the reward could be shared between those whistleblowers. The consultation also asks if a maximum cap on rewards should be imposed. Finally, the fourth relates to offences to support a whistleblower incentivisation scheme, where the government is looking for views on Fisher’s recommendations for two new criminal offences: one for knowingly making false reports under the scheme, and one for harassing or intimidating whistleblowers who report to the SFO, which may offer some protection to those not covered by the Employment Rights Act. The consultation asks whether either offence is really needed alongside existing law.
The UK government plans to use responses to the consultation to inform further policy development and a formal government response setting out next steps will be published in 2027. While the scheme is still at the proposal stage, the consultation represents a major development for whistleblowing in the UK and energy and commodity trading firms should be aware of the potential implications of such a scheme being successfully launched. For example, employees would potentially be incentivised to bypass internal channels and go straight to the SFO.
Firms should ensure that their own internal whistleblowing processes are trusted enough so that whistleblowers’ concerns are raised and investigated fairly and promptly in-house first. Even though any scheme is likely to be some way off, now is a good time to review whistleblowing policies, procedures and channels, and the culture that supports them.
