/financial crime

News and resources on financial crime, including fraud, scams, Anti Money Laundering and Know Your Customer.

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Expert opinions

Nico Barawid

Nico Barawid Co-founder at Tunic Pay

There's only so much payments friction banking customers are prepared to take

There's wisdom in the idea that faster payments means faster fraud. But the evidence wouldn't suggest that its opposite is even nearly true. Do slower payments slow down fraud? Maybe, but not by much. Consumer research we ran this autumn found that one in two UK adults have by now experienced some sort of payment scam or attempted scam. Despit...

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Prashant Bhardwaj

Prashant Bhardwaj Innovation Manager at Crif

2025: 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐀𝐖𝐍 𝐎𝐅 𝐀𝐈-𝐃𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐄𝐍 𝐂𝐘𝐁𝐄𝐑𝐂𝐑𝐈𝐌𝐄

As we step into 2025, the cybersecurity landscape is poised for a dramatic transformation driven by the dual-edged sword of artificial intelligence (AI). While AI has the potential to enhance security measures, it also equips cybercriminals with advanced tools to perpetrate increasingly sophisticated attacks. This article explores the emerging tr

/ai /crime Artificial Intelligence

Dhiraj Sharma

Dhiraj Sharma Senior Consultant at TCS

Leveraging generative AI to detect and prevent impersonation scams within the banking sector

Impersonation scams, also known as imposter scams, represent one of the most prevalent and effective strategies employed by fraudsters to deceive their victims. These scams often involve the perpetrator posing as a trusted individual or organization, such as bank representatives, law enforcement officers, or even family members, in order to manipu...

/ai /crime Artificial Intelligence and Financial Services

Francesco Fulcoli

Francesco Fulcoli Chief Compliance and Risk Officer at Flagstone

Unmasking How Fraudsters Target UK Consumers in the Digital Age

Fraud is evolving at an alarming pace, leaving UK consumers vulnerable in a digitally interconnected world. The Payment Systems Regulator’s (PSR) latest report, Unmasking How Fraudsters Target UK Consumers in the Digital Age, shines a spotlight on the tactics fraudsters employ, their impact on consumer confidence, and the measures being implemente...

/payments /crime Fintech

Ben O'Brien

Ben O'Brien Managing Director at Jaywing

Why AI-driven fraud detection is crucial for Payment Service Provider growth

Payment Service Providers (PSPs) need fraud detection systems that can anticipate and adapt to emerging types of fraud whilst maintaining the delicate balance between security and customer experience. We've witnessed this first-hand with our clients, where our AI-driven approach strengthens fraud detection capabilities across multiple jurisdictions...

/ai /crime

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Research

Impact Study

2024 Fraud Trends in Banking, Insurance, and Beyond

How generative AI is boosting fraud protection in an increasingly complex environment. As technology progresses, so do the capabilities of institutions to secure data and systems. Over 2024, the fraud landscape has been complex, and organisations must push the boundaries of innovation while maintaining a high security bar as the availability and democratisation of AI increases as we're going into 2025. The tidal wave of incoming regulation in the financial sector is an aspect that will help banking and insurance companies to safeguard their customers and data in the best way possible. Yet regulation alone does not address fraud – it’s up to individual organisations to leverage the potential of technology, and review their solutions, processes, and thus ensure compliance and safety. As fraud and regulation increase in the space, technology is one of the key factors that will help banks and insurance companies to address these increased fraud risks. Generative AI enables organisations to deliver hyper-personalised customer experiences, and combining these capabilities with carrier network insights can not only help them significantly reduce authentication fraud, but also ensure regulatory compliance. This impact study, produced in association with AWS and Vonage, examines the current fraud landscape across financial services, banking, and insurance, highlighting how generative AI and network APIs can help prevent fraud while enhancing the customer experience. Explore: Fraud trends in 2024 The impact of regulation Why data is the new gold How organisations can innovate with generative AI Best practices

362 downloads

Event Report

Managing Fraud Risks with Synthetic Data

A Practical Approach for Businesses Services Industry The financial services sector is in a constant state of evolution, and so too are the challenges it faces, particularly in the realm of financial crime. This mounting issue has become a significant concern for institutions, customers and regulators alike. The key to addressing this lies in our approach to data - its quality, management, and applications. Harnessing the power of synthetic data and AI tools has become a pivotal factor in business transformation, particularly in addressing the issue of financial crime. The ability to streamline operations and enhance efficiency is a major challenge businesses face, but the introduction of synthetic data offers promising solutions. Synthetic data provides a comprehensive view of all types of crime, a feature that is crucial for global banks often grappling with segmented fraud activity. This broader perspective enhances the institutions’ capability to effectively fight financial crime. This report summarises the discussion had during a Finextra webinar, hosted in association with Red Hat, and explores: The role of synthetic data in combatting financial crime Implications of new regulation How synthetic data enhances crime detection A practical apprach for managing fraud risk  

268 downloads

Future of Report

The Future of Payments 2025 – Digital, Instant, Profitable?

A Sibos Special Edition The global payments landscape is in a period of rapid transition, with technologies and regulations making a serious impact. Yet looking to the future of the payments industry, how can we ensure that it is digital, instant, and profitable? While consumer behaviours continue to evolve in tandem with this. Artificial intelligence (AI), tokenised assets, Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC), Blockchain, and even more pioneering technologies are shaking up the payments systems all in their own way. Adding to this atmosphere of flux, is an developing regulatory framework which promises to alter this situation further. Regulators are facing an uphill battle attempting to legislate on emerging technologies while keeping consumers safe, and providing the best outcome for payment service providers (PSPs). As we move towards milestones like open finance and more rapid payments, there is a chance the payment ecosystem could look quite different within the next few years. Under these growing pressures, global payments organisations will need to ensure that they are able to bend and adapt to the circumstance, or risk snapping. Never has it been more important for PSPs to collaborate with each other, and regulators, to ensure the best outcomes. This Sibos 2024 special edition report, was produced with contributions from Accenture, Deloitte, EBA CLEARING, Finastra, FIS Global, Investec, J.P. Morgan, Oesterreichische Nationalbank, PPI AG, Swift, and Wise. It explores: The evolution of instant payments in 2025; The modernisation correspondent banking and cross border payments; Preparing the upcoming EU payments legislation; The key to successful digitalisation; The technology innovations reshaping the payments sector.

954 downloads

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FinextraTV

Fighting Fraud with Form3: The Importance of Inbound Transaction Screening

In Part 2 of this series, FinextraTV and Chris Oakley, Head of Fraud, Form3, highlights an upcoming substantial shift in the sector where due to incoming regulations from the PSR in the UK and PSD3 across the European Union, banks will have to double down on their focus on the risk associated with receiving a payment, not only sending a payment as has been the case historically. With current fraud screening methods built for outbound payments, after these regulations are mandated, receiving banks and sending banks will be forced to split liability for fraud and reimburse victims due to the PSR. This dichotomy must also lead to changes in the way that money mules are detected, which is usually also conducted retrospectively - where this convergence of fraud mitigation and anti-money laundering happens, risks need to be managed in real-time and a wider single view of the customer will be of paramount importance.

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Long reads

Hamish Monk

Hamish Monk Senior Reporter at Finextra

Four festive payment frauds to watch this Christmas

Payments in the UK are feeling the chill this Christmas – especially in the retail sector, which rose only 0.2% last month, despite the Black Friday flurry. This figure is part of a wider trend of sluggish economic recovery in the wake of the pandemic, slumped consumer sentiment, as well as a general lack of confidence following Labour’s divisive ...

Níamh Curran

Níamh Curran Senior Reporter at Finextra

6 social media scams to look out for

Social media firms have been under increased pressure to improve fraud monitoring due to scams originating on the platforms. This comes after Authorised Push Payment (APP) victim reimbursement scheme came into effect on 7 October. Payment Service Providers are required to reimburse victims of APP fraud up to £85,000, but some are arguing social me...

Madhvi Sonia

Madhvi Sonia Head of Content at Finextra

Hurricane Milton: How to avoid natural disaster scams and fraud

As Hurricane Milton gradually tracks away from Florida, leaving deadly storm surges, flooding rain and high winds in its path, it is an unfortunate reality that fraudsters will try and capitalise on the misfortune and vulnerability of those affected. This week, the US Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Consumer Financi...