UK Fraud: Record Economic Crime Losses Exceed £10 Billion in 2025
Economic crime losses in the United Kingdom exceeded £10 billion during 2025, setting a new annual record that reflects both the increasing sophistication of fraud techniques deployed against consumers and businesses and the continued success of criminal networks in exploiting the digital infrastructure through which the majority of financial transactions now flow. The figures, compiled from Action Fraud reporting, banking industry data and insurance claims, represent losses from a combination of authorised push payment fraud, identity theft, investment scams, romance fraud and corporate finance crime.
Authorised push payment fraud — where victims are deceived into voluntarily transferring money to criminals impersonating legitimate organisations, often through highly convincing fake websites, emails or phone calls — remains the fastest-growing category and the most difficult to prevent through traditional bank fraud controls. Because the victim makes the payment themselves, believing it to be legitimate, the transaction looks identical to a genuine transfer from the perspective of the bank’s monitoring systems.
The proliferation of artificial intelligence tools has enhanced fraudsters’ ability to create convincing scam materials at scale. Deepfake voice technology has been used in business email compromise and investment fraud scenarios to impersonate company executives or financial advisers. AI-generated text has reduced the grammatical errors that previously helped alert recipients to suspicious communications. The barrier to creating sophisticated, targeted fraud campaigns has fallen dramatically.
Banks and payment providers are under increasing regulatory pressure from the Payment Systems Regulator and the Financial Conduct Authority to strengthen their fraud prevention systems and, following new mandatory reimbursement rules, to compensate victims of authorised push payment fraud more consistently. The PSR’s mandatory reimbursement regime, introduced in 2024, has placed financial liability for fraud losses on payment firms and created stronger financial incentives for investment in fraud prevention technology.
