Over £1.2 billion was stolen by criminals through authorised and unauthorised fraud in 2022, new research from UK Finance has revealed.
According to its Annual Fraud Report the losses amounted to £2,300 every minute with almost 80 percent of APP fraud cases starting online. Most of the remainder of fraud cases came via telecommunications, the report said.
However, the value of money stolen was down eight percent on 2021 while the number of fraud cases across the UK had dropped by four per cent to almost three million cases.
On the report’s findings, David Postings, Chief Executive at UK Finance, said: “Fraud has a devastating impact on victims and over £1.2 billion was stolen by criminals last year. The banking and finance sector is at the forefront of efforts to tackle this criminal activity. The sector spends billions on detection and prevention and also refunds people who have fallen victim, even if the fraud originated outside the banking system.
He added: “Our data also makes clear just how much fraud emanates from online platforms and through telecommunications. The government’s new fraud strategy rightly says we need to focus on stopping it at source and that these other sectors need to do far more to tackle the problem they are facilitating.
Unauthorised fraud
Within the total figure, unauthorised fraud losses across payment cards, remote banking and cheques, and remote purchase fraud were down on the previous year. However, in the case of the latter where a criminal uses stolen card details to buy something online, over the phone or through mail order, it remains the biggest category of losses at £395.7 million.
Authorised fraud
Authorised push payment (APP) fraud losses reached £485.2 million, down 17 per cent compared to 2021. Within this, 57 per cent of all reported cases related to purchase fraud, with case volumes breaking 100,000 for the first time.
Analysis conducted by UK Finance showed that around three quarters of online fraud starts on social media, with these platforms accounting for the greatest number of online fraud cases.
Daniel Holmes, Fraud Prevention SME at Feedzai added: “We are able to see some positive signs such as overall fraud losses coming down, but rapid changes in technology bring us to a new and critical inflection point in the fraud space.
“The risks remain elevated as fraudsters adapt and use increasingly sophisticated tactics and technology to fool consumers. This report highlights the importance for banks to maintain their focus on combining the latest anti-fraud technology with an approach that puts consumer education at the core. We also need a broad coalition of effort from beyond financial services to tackle fraud. This combination will give us the best chance possible to stop fraud at its source, and minimise the impact on consumers.
