Matt Cox

For many people, the word “fraud” evokes images of shadowy criminals using stolen identities and purloined credit card information to commit financial crimes. Perhaps surprisingly, consumers sometimes use their own personal information to commit fraud. Or they may unwittingly sell it to criminal gangs, which then rack up thousands of pounds of fraudulent debt. Both of…

Three years in, open banking is finally gaining momentum. According to the UK’s Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBiE), in 2020 nearly six billion calls were made via application programming interfaces (APIs) to bank servers in the UK and more than four million open banking payments were completed. In comparison, 2018 saw 66.8 million API calls…

It’s December, and as I settle in for another Scandinavian winter, I’m looking back on the current year with an eye toward what will happen in the next. Predicting the future is an annual pursuit at FICO, and this year my 2021 fraud predictions for the European region reflect how some of the broad trends that shaped 2020 will mutate into specific fraud challenges in t…

The latest positive scheme to be hijacked by criminals is the UK government's bounce back loan scheme for businesses. Bounce back loan fraud is being forecast at £15-26 billion. And unfortunately, as long as a simple fraud check was performed, the government has 100% liability for these loans, which means the UK taxpayer does. When the bounce back loan program…

The UK is home to the most sophisticated Authorized Push Payment (APP) scams in the world. In 2019, banks’ losses of £456 million nearly equaled the £470 million attributed to card not present (CNP) fraud. Now, in 2020, APP scams are expected to eclipse card fraud, fueled by niche schemes related to the COVID-19 pandemic. FICO has just published my new Q&A on t…

Electronic payments have paved the way for new and old authorised push payment (APP) scams to hit the UK market, with a 40% rise in 2019; 56% of Europeans surveyed experienced at least one type of fraud/scam in 2018/2019. Fraud scams are a concern for every fraud manager. In my last post, I discussed three best practices for fighting scams. Now let’s look at how an…

With criminals successfully stealing over £455 million through scams in the United Kingdom and more than €242 billion across European countries over the past two years, scams are not going away and consumers are still sending out money unknowingly to criminals every day. This is an extremely challenging and growing problem for fraud managers. Tip #1 – Communic…

We have just published our latest interactive map of European card fraud, based on data from Euromonitor International, and the results may seem confusing. While banks across Europe have stopped more fraud than ever, the total fraud losses in the 19 countries surveyed rose for the first time since 2015. What’s going on? The answer is familiar: Data breaches.…

Network International, the leading payment solutions provider in the Middle East and Africa, has rolled out FICO^® Falcon^® Platform, our real-time fraud solution that uses advanced AI fraud analytics and intelligence to accurately identify fraudulent behaviour on payment cards. I’m excited to welcome Network International to the Falcon Intelligence Network, the larg…

Financial Fraud Action UK (FFA UK) recently released their 2016 UK fraud performance report. Whilst there were some logical changes between 2015 and 2016, I was surprised at the fluctuation and significant shifts fraudsters have made in order to circumvent existing controls. Here are some highlights and lowlights I took from the report. Overall, UK fraud losses were…