The Crime Survey for England and Wales (year ending December 2025) estimated 4.4 million fraud incidents. Out of the estimated 4.4 million incidents of fraud, around 3.2 million incidents involved a loss. Victims said that they were fully reimbursed in 2.4 million of these cases. Levels of fraud have increased by 30% since the earliest comparable year, the year ending March 2017.
Fraud is a rapidly growing global issue, becoming more sophisticated, cyber enabled and frequently crossing borders. Threats include authorised push payment, account takeover, romance scams, application fraud, chargeback fraud, payment card fraud, money mules and investment scams. Although these frauds look different at the point of loss, many rely on the same underlying infrastructure. For example, compromised credentials, mule accounts, synthetic identities, manipulated communications, weak onboarding controls, fragmented customer data and cross-border criminal networks.
The surge in fraud levels has placed significant pressure on governments to respond. In the UK, fraud has become a national priority, with the government launching its Economic Crime Plan to enable coordinated action across law enforcement and regulators.
Nikhil Rathi’s recent speech at the FCA's Financial Crime Conference held on May 14, 2026, focused on the increasing threat faced by consumers from organized crime and the risks of UK financial services firms being used to facilitate such activities; as such it is a matter of economic and national security. To combat this, a range of measures were outlined, including greater cooperation, increased focus on consumer education, sharing of information between firms and the use of technology. Much of this reflects our experience of working with firms, where actions have been taken to identify high-risk corridors, deploy technology rapidly and share information more effectively. We often see information being successfully shared by MLROs to thwart bad actors.
However, we continue to see firms where onboarding processes are not sufficiently robust, where both newly onboarded and legacy clients pose financial crime risk and fraud controls still need to be enhanced to combat the ever-increasing threat. The direction of travel suggests that firms will increasingly need to demonstrate how fraud risk is identified, measured, monitored, escalated and remediated. Firms cannot just assert that they have controls in place, but they need to demonstrate how those controls work in practice, where the data comes from, how alerts are prioritized and how decisions are recorded. In addition, professional services firms in scope of the Money Laundering Regulations will need to prepare for a different AML / CTF supervisory model from the FCA which is likely to be more assertive and data driven. Fraud is increasingly a convergence issue; it sits at the intersection of financial crime, cyber, data, technology, payments and investigations. A weak onboarding control may enable the creation of an account. A cyber compromise may provide the credentials. A mule network may move the funds. Poor data integration may prevent the pattern from being detected. An under-resourced investigation function may mean the issue is not escalated quickly enough. Effective fraud prevention therefore requires more than policy. It requires connected data, clear ownership of typologies, tested controls, rapid investigation capability and evidence that the firm can explain what happened when challenged. Modern fraud is not just a regulatory compliance issue. It is a connected financial crime, cyber, data and investigation issue.
