According to banking industry group UK Finance, people in the UK lost £1.2 billion to fraud in 2022, equivalent to £2,300 a minute.
According to the data, there were around three million frauds – slightly fewer than in the previous year – with payment card fraud being the most common.
UK Finance said losses are not always reimbursed and urged tech firms to “share the burden” of covering costs.
Ministers say they will crack down on fraud as part of a national strategy.
Fraud is now the most common crime in the UK, with one in 15 people being a victim.
Indeed, according to UK Finance, the amount of money stolen in 2022 was 8% lower than in 2021 and fraud cases were down 4% – but overall there were still almost three million cases in the UK.
It said the most common type of fraud, after card fraud, was purchase-related scams.
- It has also been found that love scams – in which a gang of scammers pretend to be romantically interested in the victim in order to get money – have increased in 2022.
- However, investment scams, where scammers pretend to offer an investment opportunity, fell by a third due to pressure on the cost of living.
Britain’s chief financial officer, David Postings, said drug gangs, overseas criminal groups and “state-sponsored villains” were responsible for the bulk of the fraud.
He added that while banks are legally required to reimburse so-called unauthorized scams, they do not have to pay the costs of authorized scams, in which victims are tricked into agreeing to transfer money to scammers.
As a result, banks voluntarily reimbursed only around 59% of losses from this type of fraud, equivalent to £285.6m of the £485.2m stolen.
Mr Postings said many of the most common scams started online and urged tech and telecom companies to play a bigger role in recovering lost funds.
- UK bans all cold calling to sell financial products
- Demands refunds for push payment scams for everyone
However, industry body Tech UK said tech companies are “already taking a wide range of active measures to prevent fraud”.
Regarding future threats, Mr. Postings said he was concerned about artificial intelligence [AI] would allow scammers to “fake people even more than they already do.”
He added that AI can be used to automate scams and generate convincing scams to trick people.
The government recently released a new fraud strategy that allows banks to delay processing payments longer to investigate suspicious payments.
The strategy also includes banning cold calling for all financial products, such as those related to bogus insurance or bogus cryptocurrency programs, to stop fraud at source.
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