Over £1.17bn lost to fraud in 2024

Britain’s financial sector reported 3.31 million fraud cases in 2024, marking a 12% increase from the previous year, according to latest UK Finance data.

The surge resulted in £1.17 billion being stolen, unchanged from 2023. Fraud accounts for 41% of all reported crime in the country.

Banks prevented £1.45 billion of unauthorised fraud through advanced security systems with 70 per cent of authorised push payment (APP) fraud cases starting online and 16 per cent starting through telecommunications networks. There were 3.13 million confirmed cases of unauthorised fraud reported in 2024 (up 14 per cent compared to 2023) and losses totalled £722 million in 2024 (up two per cent).

One of the main reasons for the rise was an increase in remote purchase fraud, which had been falling in recent years. In this type of fraud criminals use stolen card details to buy something on the internet, over the phone or through mail order. Overall, remote purchase fraud case numbers increased by 22 per cent to nearly 2.6 million, and losses increased 11 per cent to just under £400 million.

By using similar tactics to APP fraud, we have seen criminals use social engineering techniques to try and get people to divulge one-time passcodes (OTPs). Once in possession of an OTP a criminal is often able to authenticate fraudulent transactions or to register compromised card details for digital wallets.

Card ID theft saw cases and losses fall back after a spike in 2023.  Losses fell 26 per cent to £58.7 million, with case volumes falling 23 per cent to just over 109,000.

Contactless fraud losses decreased by one per cent; the first time a reduction has been reported for this category since 2020. Remote banking losses also fell by seven per cent, with cases dropping by 17 per cent.

£1.45 billion of unauthorised fraud was prevented by industry, an increase of 16 per cent compared to 2023 and equivalent to 67p in every £1 of attempted fraud.

Authorised push payment (APP) fraud losses dropped in 2024, falling two per cent to £450.7 million. The total comprised £365.7 million of personal losses and £84.9 million on non-personal losses.

The number of APP fraud cases fell by 20 per cent to under 186,000. This is the lowest figure since 2020 and was driven by a range of factors, including investing in technology that can help identify and flag potentially fraudulent activity, to educating and raising awareness among consumers.

The biggest amount of APP losses came from investment fraud, which occurs when a criminal convinces their victim to move their money to a fictitious fund or to pay for a fake investment. £144.4 million was stolen through this type of fraud in 2024, an increase of 34 per cent from 2023, despite a 24 per cent reduction in cases.

Purchase scams, when a victim pays in advance for goods or services that are never received, continues to be the most common type of APP fraud. Losses to purchase scams increased by one per cent to £87.1 million, though case numbers fell 16 per cent.

The number of fraud cases where criminals impersonate a bank or the police and convince someone to transfer money to a “safe account” fell again in 2024, with losses and case numbers dropping 16 per cent and 32 per cent respectively.

There was a notable increase in international payments that were made as part of APP fraud, with criminals likely trying to get people to send money outside of the UK. International payments accounted for 11 per cent of APP losses in 2024, up from 6 per cent in 2023.

Victims of unauthorised fraud cases are legally protected against losses and UK Finance research indicates that customers are fully refunded in more than 98 per cent of unauthorised fraud cases.

In respect of APP fraud, in October 2024 the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) introduced new reimbursement rules. This means there were different reimbursement APP regimes in place throughout 2024. In total, £267.1 million of APP fraud was reimbursed to victims by banks, around 59 per cent of all money stolen from APP fraud.

On 15 May 2025 the PSR issued an update on reimbursement under its new rules and reported that in the first three months of the rules being in force, 86 per cent of money stolen through in-scope APP fraud was returned to victims.

UK Finance’s data covers a wider range of payments and account types than those covered by the new rules from the PSR which means they are not directly comparable.

Ben Donaldson, Managing Director of Economic Crime at UK Finance, said “Fraud continues to blight this country, with over £1 billion stolen by criminals in 2024. This causes severe harm to individuals, society and our economy as the stolen money goes to serious organised crime groups, both here and abroad.

“The financial services industry works tirelessly to protect customers and prevent billions more being stolen by fraudsters, but we know that criminals are always looking for new ways to exploit victims.

“To deal with this threat, we need a more proactive approach with the public and private sectors working more closely together and using data and intelligence more effectively. We also need the technology and telecommunication sectors to step up and actually fight the fraud originating on their platforms and networks.”

“While the UK’s made massive progress in the fight against fraud and financial crime in recent years, the industry isn’t growing complacent. Fraud in the UK still isn’t declining. Now is the time to recognise this blight as the systemic problem it is and address it with a systemic solution. Financial institutions, governments, law enforcement, and regulators must collaborate and share intelligence in real time if we hope to meaningfully reduce fraud losses in the UK and prevent the billions of pounds stolen by fraudsters every year in this country from ever leaving victims’ accounts.”

Fraud source

Source	Number of Cases	Value of Losses
Online	70%	29%
Telecommunications	16%	36%
Email	1%	10%
Other	3%	7%
Unknown	10%	18%