UK banks say scammers stole almost £1.3 billion last year

UK Finance’s latest report found 4.1 million incidents in which people actually lost money in 2025. That’s up 11% on the year before and 31% since 2023 — roughly eight cases every minute. Investment scams jumped 40% to a new high, and purchase scams that use stolen card details also hit record levels.

Romance fraud remains a big problem. Criminals create fake dating and social-media profiles, build relationships, then take money. In some cases they have even married victims so they can keep extracting cash. One florist, Kirsty Guest, lost £80,000 after months of contact with a man who called himself Patrick; the photos belonged to someone else entirely. Another woman found that the first four matches she received on a dating site were all likely scammers.

Banks now describe fraud as a national-security issue because of both the sums involved and the organised groups behind it. They say AI has made the attacks faster and more convincing — including cloned voices of celebrities or relatives, so more people fall for them, often at a moment when they are already under pressure.

UK Finance argues that banks cannot be the only line of defence. It wants social-media firms and online marketplaces to face tougher, enforceable duties: better checks on ads and sellers, faster removal of fraudulent content, and safer payment systems.

Most victims of authorised push-payment fraud now have a legal right to a refund, yet losses in that category still rose 19% and 12% of the stolen money was not repaid. Impersonation scams (someone pretending to be a bank or the police) actually fell 11%. Experts expect a fresh wave of World Cup-related cons in the coming weeks.

Many victims never report what happened, so the official figures almost certainly understate the true scale.