Santander says that over £18 million was stolen from customers by scammers in the first three months of 2025.
The bank has launched a 'Quartely Scamtracker' to keep abreast of emerging trends in fraud across its retail banking base.
While the £18 million figure marks a 13% decrease in the amount taken by scammers during the previous quarter (Q4 2024), the bank has highlighted a series of new worrying trends emerging.
Impersonation scams, advance fee scams and romance/friendship scams were called out as the top rising scams during Q1 2025, collectively accounting for nearly £3.5 million stolen from customers. The increase comes despite research from Santander showing that more than half of consumers say they are aware of romance/friendship scams (63%) and impersonation scams (49%).
Despite decreasing by 17% quarter-on-quarter, the Scamtracker shows that purchase scams continue to account for more than half of all claims during Q1 2025, individually making up for another £3.5 million stolen. Cases involving gig tickets accounted for more than 10% of all purchase scam claims as scammers prey on the demand for Sabrina Carpenter and Coldplay tickets among fans.
While claims values are largely down across the board quarter on quarter, impersonation scams of other organisations which are not a bank or the police, such as HMRC, saw the largest proportionate increase, accounting for nearly 14% (£1.2 million) of the total amount stolen, up from 13% in Q4 2024.
Chris Ainsley, head of fraud risk management at Santander UK says: “Scams are evolving at breakneck speed, which can make staying on top of the new ones exceptionally hard for customers. Just this week we’ve seen the emergence of fake sportswear ads on Facebook leading to 450 customers being scammed out of their hard-earned money. Providing customers with the information they need to protect themselves from these criminals is vital if we don’t want to see that £18 million increase in the next Scamtracker stats.”