Comment on UK Finance’s Annual Fraud Report 2023 - SmartSearch

11 May 2023

Following the announcement today by UK Finance’s Annual Fraud Report 2023, we have a comment from digital compliance expert SmartSearch.

UK Finance is the collective voice for the banking and finance industry. The report shows that:

• More than £1.2 billion was stolen by criminals through authorised and unauthorised fraud in 2022, equivalent to over £2,300 every minute.
• The banking and finance industry prevented a further £1.2 billion of unauthorised fraud from getting into the hands of criminals.

SmartSearch’s market-leading technology provides customer and business verification checks for 6,000 clients and 55,000 users across regulated sectors such as banking and finance, property, legal, accounting, insurance and gaming.

Martin Cheek, managing director of SmartSearch and qualified lawyer said: “The ubiquity and convenience of digital transfers of funds are a double-edged sword. While they obviously improve the speed and efficiency of transactions, digital transfers of money can also create an opportunity for criminals to ply their corrupt trade.

“Technology is playing an increasingly vital role in preventing these crimes and the money laundering that is an inevitable consequence of them.

“Regulated firms must continue to invest in electronic verification to help protect their customers from fraud – and themselves from the fines and reputational damage which comes from anti-money laundering breaches.”