Stuart Skinner, Nationwide’s head of fraud, explains why the issue of tackling fraud is a joint effort.
Shocking statistics: According to Financial Fraud Action UK (FFA UK) more than one million incidents of financial fraud occurred in the first six months of 2016, equating to an incident every 15 seconds.
Although this figure is perhaps shocking, when you consider that last year banks stopped £7 in every £10 of attempted fraud from happening, the true scale of the issue is clear.
It’s a joint effort: Nationwide prevented 90 per cent of fraud attempted online in the last financial year but because the systems and processes used by financial institutions like Nationwide are working and making fraudsters’ lives harder, they are increasingly targeting consumers directly. This is why we need to work together to stop them in their tracks.
Mr Torrible, from Bournemouth, did just this. Earlier this year he had a lucky escape thanks to an eagle-eyed member of staff at our Canford Cliffs branch. He received an email about a payment of £2,000 he was due to make towards the deposit on a new holiday home in Spain, but our Customer Representative noticed the bank account details in the email related to a British rather than Spanish account. When Mr Torrible subsequently investigated, he found the details were bogus and his email account had been hacked. The case has now been reported to both the British and Spanish police.