Banks, telcos call for more data sharing to fight fraud

A coalition of financial services institutions and communications service providers, convened by consumer advocacy organisation Which?, have called on the new Labour government to make combating digital fraud a national priority as it launches a “landmark” commitment to data sharing that it believes will go some way to help.

Barclays, BT, Mobile UK, Nationwide, NatWest, Starling Bank, Three, UK Finance, Virgin Media O2 and Vodafone have all lent their signatures to the call for ministers to take a leading role to enable businesses to share more and better intelligence to detect fraud and protect the law-abiding public.

“Fraud continues to blight the lives of so many consumers across the country, with devastating consequences both financially and emotionally,” said Which? policy and advocacy director, Rocio Concha.

“For too long, the actors that will be part of the fight to combat this terrible crime have been operating in silos – so this commitment from banks and telecoms providers to work together to share data is a significant step forward in the right direction.

“We urge the new government to make fraud a national priority and to ensure that businesses can share data and best practices with each other to bolster their defences and ultimately keep their customers safe,” added Concha.

The group says that sharing fraud intelligence will be key to getting ahead of criminals, particularly organised fraudsters, who have blighted the lives of so many. Fraud already accounts for 40% of all crimes recorded in England and Wales – the majority of it digitally enabled in some way – and costs consumers well north of £1bn every single year.

They say that individual businesses, law enforcement agencies and central government are not working collaboratively enough to bring these numbers down, and that sharing information on how criminals exploit gaps in systems would be an excellent first step, because it will give everyone more information to recognise attacks before they happen and take action.

Although the coalition member do want to try to work together, they say that there are still barriers that deter them from sharing data effectively, specifically concerns around the potential breach of UK data protection regulations and competition. They want the government to do something to tackle these barriers as well, otherwise the industry will face a “painfully slow, costly and high-risk approach” in an environment where fraudsters and cyber criminals move quickly.

As such, the coalition wants the government to put in place central leadership to coordinate their hoped-for initiative, and lead a taskforce to share fraud data, working across industry sectors and delivering secure technical solutions that can be used to prevent fraud. Its members said they “stand ready” to join this taskforce.

Lord Hanson, Home Office minister with responsibility for fraud, said: “As a new government, we are determined to treat fraud with the seriousness it deserves, and protect all those who are targeted by these criminals. 

“This will take all of us to come together in a shared national effort to defeat this epidemic, which is why I look forward to working with law enforcement partners, consumer groups and companies involved,” he said. “Ministers will be looking at how we can improve the approach to tackling fraud following our manifesto commitments in July.”

This article was updated at 14:00 on 1 August 2024 to incorporate a quote from the Home Office.