Context
The FCA has published a speech, initially delivered by Andrea Bowe, Director of the specialist directorate, on 5 September 2024, at the Westminster Legal Policy Forum Keynote Seminar “Next Steps for Tackling Fraud and Financial Crime”.
Key points to note and next actions
The key highlights from the speech are:
- collaboration and a collective effort are key to tackling fraud;
- partnerships, where ideas and lessons learnt are shared, and where data and intelligence are exchanged, are essential in reinforcing defences and staying ahead of evolving threats; and
- addressing mule activity is an area where collective efforts can have a substantial impact on disrupting and greatly reducing the flow of fraudulent funds.
Bowe stated that the FCA plays a significant role in reducing financial crime, and set out a number of key statistics whilst acknowledging that there can be no illusion about the scale of the problems to fix:
- Fraud makes up 36% of all the crime reported in England and Wales, with 3.2m incidents in the year to March 2024.
- That figure, however, represented a 16% fall on the year before, with half a million fewer victims last year compared with 2022.
- UK Finance reported total losses from payment fraud were down 4%.
- However, while some fraud figures may have fallen, recently released Financial Ombudsman Service figures confirm that scam related complaints have reached their highest level since early 2018.