UNITED KINGDOM Decrease in Fraud YoY

UK Posts the Region’s Best Overall Performance for Second Year

After achieving the largest single reduction of any European country in 2019, the banks of the UK have repeated this, with the best net reductions of the 18 countries in this report for the second year running.

Whilst the UK has seen the same challenges as all other European countries — and often an elevated threated vs other markets — the difference in performance is staggering, with an additional £46M (€69M) of relative value prevented over the last period, as reported by UK Finance. Without the UK performance, the overall European numbers would be posting a sizable increase in loss.

This success is testament to the tenacity of the UK banks, which have always favoured customer service over fraud prevention and focused on enabling new, secured channels. This has made for one of the most hostile but still lucrative environments for fraud in the report. Resoundingly, the data shows that banks have continued to improve their fraud defences, despite already having the most advanced approach to customer enablement and frictionless journeys.

FICO is proud to continue to partner with the vast majority of banks in the region in continuing to improve upon this performance. Several of the UK banks have been the first to trial and adopt FICO® Falcon® Compromise Manager, which is designed to flag fraud attacks and data compromises much earlier, to minimise losses and better protect customers, facilitating even greater collaboration between the banks. The results from these trials have shown significant improvement in CNP losses, and if adoption continues at the predicted rate, the UK is likely to continue to drive sizeable drops in fraud rates, without having to sacrifice customer experience.