One in five have been a victim of fraud in the last couple of years

Just over one in five (21%) of adults across UK and 14 other countries around the world were defrauded between 2021 and 2023 according to research by the Social Market Foundation (SMF), a cross-party Westminster think tank that a surveyed almost 29,000 people.

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. (See notes for further details about the survey).

The one in five figure implies that there were 228 million individual victims of fraud across the 15 countries over the period. Notably, nearly 40% 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 – more than half of survey participants (52%) said that their government gave “no” or only “a low” priority to fraud.

Contrary to popular belief, fraud victims were spread fairly evenly across age cohorts – the survey found that 20% of 18-24-year-olds fell victim to at least one fraud in the years 2021 to 2023. While 18% of those 65 and over did. People aged 35-44 were the most likely to experience fraud (23%).

The most common type of fraud victims experienced was “push-payment fraud (40%), where the victim has played an inadvertent role in the fraud. Across the victim population described earlier, there were likely around 91 million victims, who suffered from “’ush payment fraud’ over the three-year period.

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.”

Chris Ainsley, Head of Fraud Risk Management from Santander 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.”