Over £1.2bn stolen through fraud in 2022, with nearly 80% of APP fraud cases starting online

UK Finance today releases its Annual Fraud Report, detailing the amount of money stolen by criminals through financial fraud in 2022.

Over £1.2bn was stolen by criminals through authorised and unauthorised fraud in 2022, equivalent to over £2,300 every minute.

78 % of APP fraud cases start online and 18 % start via telecommunications.

The banking and finance industry prevented a further £1.2bn of unauthorised fraud from getting into the hands of criminals.

Over £1.2bn was stolen through fraud in 2022, a reduction of eight % on 2021. The number of fraud cases across the UK was down four % to almost three million cases.

Unauthorised fraud 

Within the total figure, unauthorised fraud losses across payment cards, remote banking and cheques reached £726.9 m in 2022, a decrease of less than 1 % compared to 2021.

Remote purchase fraud, where a criminal uses stolen card details to buy something online, over the phone or through mail order, remains the biggest category of losses at £395.7 m – although this figure was again down on the previous year. Fraud on lost and stolen cards increased by 30 % to £100.2 m and card ID theft, where a criminal opens or takes over a card account in someone else’s name, almost doubled to £51.7m.  Victims of unauthorised fraud cases such as these are legally protected against losses

Authorised fraud

Authorised push payment (APP) fraud losses reached £485.2 m, down 17 % compared to 2021. Within this, 57 % of all reported cases related to purchase fraud, with case volumes breaking 100,000 for the first time. Investment fraud continued to be one of the largest proportion of APP losses (24 %), although there was a 34 % reduction compared with 2021. Overall, the amount of APP fraud losses reimbursed increased by 5 % in 2022 compared to the previous year.

Fraud origination

The banking and finance industry spends billions of pounds each year fighting fraud and economic crime. However, the majority of fraud originates outside the banking sector and UK Finance has conducted analysis on over 59,000 APP fraud cases to show the sources of fraud.

The analysis showed that 78 % of APP fraud cases originated online – these tend to include lower-value fraud such as purchase fraud and therefore account for 36 % of losses. Social media platforms account for the greatest number of online fraud cases – around three quarters of online fraud starts on social media.

Meanwhile, 18 % of fraud cases originate via telecommunications – these are usually higher value cases, such as impersonation fraud, and account for 44 % of losses.

Given so much fraud is initiated from criminal activity taking place through online platforms and telecommunications, UK Finance and its members have long called for far greater cross-sector action to tackle the problem at source.

David Postings, chief executive at UK Finance, said: “Fraud has a devastating impact on victims and over £1.2bn 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.

“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.”

Daniel Holmes, fraud prevention SME, Feedzai said: “Feedzai is proud to partner with UK Finance to deliver its Annual Fraud Report 2023. 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.”