UK financial fraudsters made off with over £1.2 billion in 2022

AROUND £1.2 billion (S$2 billion) was stolen through authorised and unauthorised financial fraud in the UK in 2022, underlining the scale of a problem that continues to beset the banking industry.

The losses are equivalent to £2,300 being stolen every single minute last year, according to a report by UK Finance, a lobby group for the industry. Banks stopped a further £1.2 billion of unauthorised fraud last year, the report said.

Unauthorised payments totalled £727 million, with more than half of those losses coming as a result of stolen card details being used for purchases. Cases where criminals use stolen card IDs to set up or take over card accounts almost doubled.

Some £485 million of losses came from authorised fraud. That’s when a person or business is tricked into sending money to individuals posing as a genuine payee. That included £114 million lost to investment scams, £110 million handed over to criminals posing as police or bank staff and £31 million from romance scams, according to the report.

The ongoing cost-of-living crisis has seen criminals take advantage of people’s financial worries, promising fake investment opportunities and cheap deals to secure personal details, the report said. It noted that 78 per cent of authorised fraud cases originate on the Internet and called for online platforms to do more to kick fraudsters off their platforms.

While victims of transactions that are unknown to them are legally protected against losses, authorised fraud is more of a grey area. Those that authorise the payment themselves have no legal protection to cover them for losses under current legislation. BLOOMBERG