Some one in five (21 per cent) of adults across UK and in 14 other countries around the world were defrauded between 2021 and 2023, according to a survey presented at the Global Fraud Summit 2024 in London, a meeting hosted by the Home Secretary James Cleverly.
The research was by the Social Market Foundation, a cross-party Westminster think tank, and involved a survey of almost 29,000 people. Including the UK, the SMF surveyed 15 countries, including Japan, Singapore, Brazil, Germany, USA, Mexico and Australia – to understand experiences of fraud in richer and poorer nations, as well as under very different political and systems and cultures. That one in five figure implies some 228 million victims of fraud across the 15 countries over the period. Nearly 40 per cent of victims had suffered from fraud more than once.
Despite the scale of the problem, a majority of people across the 15 countries do not believe their governments’ are prioritising fraud – a half of survey participants (52pc) said that their government gave “no” or only “a low” priority to fraud. Fraud victims were spread fairly evenly across age cohorts – the survey found that 20pc of 18-24 year olds fell victim to at least one fraud in the years 2021 to 2023; by comparison, 18pc of those 65 and over did. People aged 35 to 44 were the most likely to experience fraud (23pc of those surveyed).
The most common type of fraud victims experienced was “push-payment fraud (40pc), where the victim has inadvertently sent money to the fraudster.
The multi-country survey is part of a wider SMF project sponsored by Santander UK looking at some of the international aspects of fraud; and in particular how the nature and extent of it, and the public understanding towards it, differs across countries. Later in the year, the SMF will publish a full report, looking at what the lessons about fraud for the UK, from other countries, might be.
Richard Hyde, Senior Researcher at Social Market Foundation, said: “Fraud is undoubtedly plaguing the UK, but it is not a uniquely British problem. Individuals in major economies across the world are also suffering. Strikingly, over half the people we surveyed believe that their government did not prioritise fraud very highly. Without robust international comparisons, we cannot hold our politicians and policymakers to account for what they are or are not doing to tackle fraud.”
“In subsequent work, the SMF will provide a more detailed picture of fraud taking place across the world, and look to highlight key counter-fraud policy lessons for the UK, including identifying what the main ingredients of an effective international effort against fraud might look like.”
And Santander Head of Fraud Risk Management Chris Ainsley said: “These findings show the staggering scale of fraud globally and underline the importance of working together to protect people from fraudsters. Santander remains committed to working with policymakers and across industries, including technology and social media firms, to help ensure the best possible protections against fraud are in place.
“These findings also show the significant number of frauds where victims have been tricked or socially engineered into personally handing over their money, so it’s important people continue to take steps to educate themselves about the latest scams, including using trusted sources of information such as the Take Five website.”
The SMF briefing, Fraudscape, will be published at https://www.smf.co.uk/publications/fraudscape-international-fraud.
On day one of the summit, G7 and Five Eyes nations, as well as Singapore and South Korea, agreed a communiqué. James Cleverly said: “We’ve been clear that the global community needs to unite to fight fraud head on and this communique is a massive step forward. The United Kingdom and our friends at this summit possess the finest law enforcement agencies in the world. We have already reduced fraud by 13 per cent in England and Wales. New action from the international community will help reduce that even further.”
The communique spoke in vague terms, for example that those signed committed ‘to raising public awareness of fraud to prevent victimisation and encourage greater reporting’. On the crucial matter of preventing the reach and means of fraudsters, the document spoke vaguely of ‘collaboration both within and across sectors’ and that those signing ‘expect them [industry] to take further action to strengthen their counter-fraud efforts’. And as for fraudsters and scammers working in countries in effect out of the reach of the police in countries affected by their crime, the communique again only vaguely noted countries were ‘collectively being targeted by criminal networks operating from specific jurisdictions. We support stronger coordination of law enforcement operations in these jurisdictions and will continue to explore further avenues to bolster collaboration’.
Mr Cleverly’s 13 per cent came from the most recent estimate from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) for the year ending September 2023, by the ONS (Office for National Statistics) that showed some 3.2 million fraud offences, a 13pc decrease compared with the year ending September 2022. However overall police recorded fraud was 6pc higher (1.1 million offences) compared with the year ending September 2022, mainly due to a rise in offences reported by the trade association UK Finance. UK Finance reported a 22pc increase (to 489,596 offences) compared with the year ending September 2022, while another, counter-fraud trade body, Cifas reported a 4pc decrease in fraud (to 348,577 offences) compared with the year ending September 2022.
Background
For more on Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud, visit the UK Finance blog.
