South West Fraud Forum 2026 Annual Conference

The South West Fraud Forum is pleased to reveal the confirmed lineup of speakers attending the Annual Conference on 24 March 2026 at Innovations Zone, Engine Shed, Bristol, BS1 6QH.

This year’s conference will focus on Asset Recovery and the UK’s evolving approach to recovering the proceeds of crime and we are excited to announce our latest speakers:

• Dr Amber Phillips – University of the West of England (Faculty of Business and Law)
• Asset Recovery Incentivisation Scheme (ARIS), Home Office
• Jane Walters – Companies House (Specialist Intelligence Unit)
• Pete Highway and Amanda Alldridge – ACE Team, Avon & Somerset Police
• John Allcock – NatWest Group
• Dr Penny Dunbabin – Senior Policy Lead in the Fraud Policy Unit, Home Office

Dr Amber Phillips
Dr Amber Phillips is a criminologist specialising in organised and economic crime. She has a particular interest in asset recovery, inspired by her experiences with anti-mafia organisations in Calabria, Italy, which inspired her interest in criminology in the first place. Amber’s most recent work has focused on developing alternative success measures for asset recovery in England and Wales, and she was recently awarded £90,000 by the National Economic Crime Centre and UK Home Office for a research project exploring the deterrent impact of proceeds of crime legislation. Her work has been published in international journals including Trends in Organised Crime, and she is a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Economic Criminology. She is an expert reviewer for funding bodies including the European Commission and the Independent Social Research Foundation.

Senior Member of Home Office ARIS
The Home Office Asset Recovery Incentivisation Scheme (ARIS) is a UK government program launched in 2006 that aims to incentivise law enforcement agencies to recover criminal assets. ARIS redistributes a portion of recovered criminal assets to agencies involved in the asset recovery process, providing operational partners with incentives to pursue asset recovery as part of crime reduction efforts.

The scheme allocates net receipts from asset recovery between the Home Office and operational partners based on their contributions to delivering receipts into ARIS. The proceeds from asset recovery can be reinvested in tackling crime or returned to victims following criminal conviction

Jane Walters
Since Jane joined Companies House in 1989, Jane has developed a depth of knowledge and expertise spanning a number of operational departments within Companies House. Jane has a breadth of experience dealing with front facing issues and complexities faced by Companies House. Jane has been pivotal in the implementation of the Companies House Intelligence Department taking a lead role on the establishment and development of the intelligence department. Most recently Jane has been at the forefront of the ongoing implementation of the newly formed Specialist Intelligence Unit, building a strong network of partnerships to tackle economic crime.

Peter Highway and Amanda Alldridge
Asset Confiscation Enforcement (ACE) Team

The ACE team are a team of specialist Financial Investigators along with a Prison / Enforcement Investigator that supports the region in ensuring criminals pay back their criminal benefit.

John Allcock
John joined NatWest Group in 2007 and has built extensive experience across corporate operations, business relationship management, and financial crime prevention. After supporting a broad portfolio of business clients as a Commercial Assistant Relationship Manager, he moved into the Fraud Prevention team in 2021. John now advises organisations on emerging fraud risks and plays an active role in delivering fraud and scam education to businesses across the UK, equipping teams with the insight needed to stay ahead of evolving threats.

Dr Penny Dunbabin
Dr Penny Dunbabin is the Senior Policy Lead at the Home Office. She joined the Home Office in 2023 and was responsible for writing the guidance for the offence of failure to prevent fraud. This included an informal consultation with over 50 Government departments, regulators and arm’s length bodies and over 100 industry representatives, including 38 trade bodies and a number of professional bodies who circulated to their members. Penny is now working on developing policy to protect businesses against fraud.

and

our Panel on (Crypto) Asset Recovery with

Andrew Bird KC
Andrew Bird KC read law at Trinity Hall, Cambridge and was called to the Bar (Inner Temple) in 1987. He has been a tenant at 5 St Andrew’s Hill (formerly 1 Harcourt Buildings) since 1989. He is a specialist in white‑collar crime, civil and criminal asset forfeiture, and civil and public law proceedings which overlap with those jurisdictions. He has a long-standing expertise (acting for both sides) in judicial review challenges to search warrants, including the Faisaltex, NUFC and CumEx Litigation.

Since taking Silk in 2021, he has appeared for the defence in sanctions, bribery, border fraud, in addition to continuing his private prosecution practice and acting for both sides in Restraint, Confiscation, Civil Recovery and Summary Proceedings. Andrew is ranked in Chambers and Partners in the fields of POCA and Asset Forfeiture (Band 1 Silk), Financial Crime, and Private Prosecutions – Financial Crime.

He is ranked in the Legal 500 in the field of POCA and Asset Forfeiture, and also recognised in the Lexology Index at the UK Bar in the fields of Civil Fraud, Criminal Fraud and Asset Recovery. He is a contributing editor to Montgomery & Ormerod on Fraud and Smith & Owen on Asset Recovery (OUP).

Rachel Harrison
Rachel Harrison is a Senior Associate & Solicitor Advocate at CMS UK, where she specialises in banking, finance, and digital assets disputes. She has a track-record of guiding clients through reputationally-sensitive and high-profile disputes, often involving frauds. Rachel has significant in-house experience, having spent a year on secondment to a leading cryptoexchange, managing its international (excluding US) litigation docket. She is ranked by Chambers & Partners as an ‘associate to watch’ for Crypto Asset Disputes (UK) and listed by Legal500 as a ‘key lawyer’ for Banking Litigation (London).

Inés Hamilton Sánchez
Inés Hamilton Sánchez is a Manager in the Forensics Investigations and Intelligence team in London.Inés serves as the operational lead for Kroll’s crypto investigations team in London, and has worked on cases including combined claims of over USD 1 billion, some backed by litigation funding, that are currently being heard in global courts.

With a global remit to manage the technical components of Kroll’s cryptocurrency and blockchain investigations, Inés specializes in retrieving and analyzing online information from sources such as blockchains, internet infrastructure, social media and the deep web. Inés has worked on investigations for victims of sophisticated hacks, cryptocurrency thefts carried out through the victim’s IT provider, and has supported on several source of wealth reviews into significantly crypto-wealthy individuals on behalf of retail banks and investors.

Attendance is free for current SWFF members. Those that are not yet members are warmly welcomed and may secure places here. To obtain your membership discount code, please email info@SWFF.org.uk.