Why I’m Optimistic This Fraud Week

A quick scan of recent headlines is enough to give anyone pause about the current state of fraud and scams. Recent data from Lloyds Bank shows older customers are increasingly likely to be targeted by romance scams.¹ In the US, the government recently seized $15 billion in bitcoin assets linked to a global cryptocurrency scam.² Data from the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA) shows consumers worldwide lost $442 billion to scams in 2024.

Yet, despite these concerning trends, I remain fundamentally optimistic this International Fraud Week. Why? Because the response from the financial industry, regulators, and technology providers is giving us reason to be.

We are no longer debating the problem. We’re embracing and building solutions that protect customers.

Key Takeaways

• One of the main reasons to be optimistic this Fraud Week is that financial institutions are moving past fragmented solutions in favor of creating a single view of all customer interactions. 
• Many organizations are also going beyond solely measuring the financial impact of fraud to measuring its impact on people. 
• Global regulations are also shifting to establish an “ecosystem of carefulness” that redistributes liability for fraud and scams among key players, including banks and third parties (e.g., telecom companies, social media firms, and email providers).

The Full Picture: Fighting Fraud with a Centralized Customer View 

For too long, fraud prevention has been a fragmented operation. Teams relied on point solutions that only offered snapshots of customer activity. A login here, a payment there, etc. However, this disjointed approach creates blind spots in financial institutions’ systems.

The bottom line: you can’t catch the maximum amount of fraud or scams with islands of point solutions. 

Fraud is becoming increasingly cross-channel. For example, a large payment might be received quickly through a faster payment system. Then it gets spent by a card transaction. Channel silos can miss interconnected risks, allowing fraud to go unnoticed.

Reasons to be Optimistic

Protecting customers from fraud requires a complete, 360-degree understanding of their normal behaviors.

One of the biggest reasons for optimism this Fraud Week is the increased adoption of a centralized view of the customer and the strong impact it’s having. We’re moving past fragmented, channel-siloed solutions to create a single source of truth for all customer interactions.

Banks that take the time to understand their customers’ normal behaviors across all channels and continuously monitor for anomalies are setting themselves up for a stronger long-term relationship. It’s a powerful effort in the fight against fraud that focuses on treating customers with the respect and trust they deserve and expect.

Measuring Fraud’s Impact on People Over Profits

Historically, an organization’s success in fighting fraud often comes down to a simple metric: financial losses. The goal (understandably) was to protect the organization’s bottom line by minimizing losses. While this is a mission-critical priority, it has often meant that the human cost of fraud and scams (sleepless nights, broken trust, and victims’ financial distress) has been treated as secondary thoughts.

This approach means fraud attacks don’t just cost financial institutions money. They also hurt customers’ trust in their financial organization.

Reasons to be Optimistic

This Fraud Week, we’re seeing the financial services industry recognize that the repercussions of fraud go beyond financial fallout. More organizations are embracing the essential shift to measure the true impact on people. The number of customers protected is now viewed as a metric of equal importance to the amount lost. 

This is a positive development that demonstrates the industry’s commitment to protecting as many customers as possible, not just generating revenue. Banks that adopt a customer-centric view of trust are making significant investments in their customers’ trust and loyalty.

AI Deployed in the Fight Against Scams

Whenever new technologies emerge, criminals are always the earliest adopters. GenAI technology is no exception. As we’ve reported before, criminals are using GenAI tools to push voice cloning, deepfakes, and SMS/phishing message scams. Fraudsters are constantly innovating, developing new tactics, and enhancing existing ones, including synthetic identity fraud, romance scams, or impersonation fraud. 

Banks must use trustworthy AI and machine learning models that are unbiased and offer transparent decision-making. “Black box” AI is eroding trust in financial services by concealing the reasons for its decisions.

Reasons to be Optimistic

Fortunately, there’s strong evidence to suggest that financial institutions are already making investments in their own AI solutions to prevent fraud. Feedzai’s 2025 AI Trends in Fraud and Financial Crime Prevention report finds 90% of surveyed banks are using AI as part of their fraud prevention strategy. Equally encouraging is that many organizations have implemented their AI solutions within the past two years.  

If that wasn’t encouraging enough, GenAI is also encouraging customers to join the front line against scams. Individuals can use GenAI technology to detect red flags in an advertisement before making a purchase. Armed with this technology, everyday people are empowered to join the fight against scams, gaining confidence in their ability to catch warning signs, and becoming more trusting of their banks.

It’s also encouraging to see the industry move towards model guidelines such as the TRUST Framework, built on the pillars of transparent, robust, unbiased, secure, and tested AI. This framework presents banks with an innovative opportunity to secure the trust of both the broader financial services sector and their customers.

“Criminals don’t wait for permission to innovate. They are increasingly making AI part of their fraud attack strategy. Banks need to match these efforts by considering the addition of GenAI capabilities on top of their existing fraud ecosystems and solutions.”

—Dan Holmes, VP of Product Planning and Strategy, Feedzai

Global Regulations Are Putting Customers First

The game is changing. Combating financial crime is increasingly seen as a shared responsibility that requires a multi-industry approach. This shift is redistributing liability among various key players, including sending and receiving banks, as well as third parties such as telecommunications companies, social media platforms, and email providers. This shared framework is designed to create an “ecosystem of carefulness” where everyone, including customers, plays an active role in fraud vigilance.

Reasons to be Optimistic

We’re seeing the end of the era of customer liability for scams in sight. Driven by a rise in regulations across multiple markets, the burden of liability is now shifting to other parties. For example, the UK has been a pioneer in shared liability for most scam victims, with sending and receiving organizations splitting the loss evenly.

Other regions are launching similar efforts. The EU’s PDS3 proposal will refund certain types of scams. Australia recently launched its Scams Prevention Framework, which includes provisions for entities to compensate victims if protection measures are not met. Finally, the Singapore Shared Responsibility Framework (SRF) is also tightening accountability for digital fraud prevention by holding third parties, such as telecom providers, liable for their role in fraud losses.

Collaboration Becomes a Reality

Scams and fraud don’t happen in a vacuum. Scams are targeting new audiences via email, telecom channels, and social media platforms. We are now seeing organizations in these fields collaborate to build a comprehensive, cross-industry anti-fraud framework. Payment rails themselves also have the unique opportunity to leverage their broad perspective on data to provide real-time insights to banks that they cannot replicate on their own.

But while it’s well-intentioned, efforts to bring multiple parties together to discuss shared strategies have proven challenging. 

Reasons to be Optimistic

Several notable developments, however, suggest that we’re seeing a greater willingness to bring different parties together to share fraud intelligence and protect consumers more effectively. These initiatives include:

• Feedzai & Mastercard’s P2P Partnership: Earlier this year, Feedzai and Mastercard joined forces to secure peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions from scams. Under the partnership, Mastercard will deploy its Consumer Fraud Risk Solution (CFR) using Feedzai’s AI-native platform to detect and prevent scams in real time. 
• GASA Debuts its GSE Partnership: GASA launched its Global Signal Exchange program earlier this year and has already seen the number of data points it uses rise to 135 million.

Taken together, there are strong signs that collaboration is finally becoming a reality as banks and non-bank organizations take essential steps to protect their users and find bad actors on their platforms. 

Let’s Be Optimistic this Fraud Trust Week

Make no mistake: the threat of scams and fraud losses remains a serious concern. By no means should any of us in the fraud-fighting community take these developments as a reason to get complacent. 

However, it’s also important to acknowledge the positive developments that financial institutions, regulators, and other industries are implementing to protect customers and maintain the trustworthiness of banking and commerce.  

The fight against fraud is ongoing, but the foundation of trust is finally being cemented through intelligence, transparency, and a commitment to protecting customers by understanding who they are and how they engage with financial services.

Additional Resources

• Collection: Building Trust in Every Transaction
• Webinar: The Future of Fraud is Here: Are You Ready?
• Report: Shift from Scams to Trust with AI: A Guide for Banks
• Solution: Prevent Account Takeover with Behavioral Biometrics for Silent
and Continuous Protection