The Illegal Wildlife Trade is the fourth largest illegal trade globally after arms, drugs and human trafficking and is consistently associated with other forms of serious and organised crime such as money laundering, fraud, and corruption. The trade is extremely lucrative and the total value of IWT is estimated to be approximately £15 billion every year.

Global regulators, charities and NGOs provide vital reporting on this crime and how to address this issue. This page contains links to these reports as well as latest news and guidance over which species are impacted by this trade. You can also read our project report where we detail the background to the Toolkit and some of the key risks identified in our research.

Every organisation’s potential exposure to IWT will be different depending on the location, nature and scale of their business. However, all financial institutions should incorporate strategic management frameworks to ensure they are not exposed to financial flows associated with IWT. The ‘model’ framework below is based on best practice and provides practical steps that Financial Institutions can follow to implement an effective set of controls against IWT.

Each panel contains guidance on why these procedures should be included within an organisation’s Strategic Framework, as well as examples of best practice. The panels also include further resources to help firms tailor the framework to their specific needs.

We have compiled a set of key IWT-related red flag indicators to help financial institutions identify the key signs of suspicious activity related to IWT. Some of these red flags are common to other types of crime, but are particularly relevant to IWT.

These terms highlight the many methods by which IWT is concealed within legitimate trade. Hence firms will need to assess how to incorporate these terms into their systems based on the nature of their own business, and by combining these terms with other red flag indicators to minimise the amount of false alerts. Please note that not all red flags apply to all organisations and each organisation should select those that apply to them.