Over £1.2bn was stolen by criminals through authorised and unauthorised fraud in 2022, new figures from UK Finance have revealed.

The total, published in a new fraud report by the banking body, is equivalent to £2,300 taken every minute.

Within the total figure, unauthorised fraud losses across payment cards, remote banking and cheques reached £726.9m last year, which represented a miniscule decrease of less than 1% compared to 2021. 

Remote purchase fraud – where a criminal uses stolen card details to buy something online, over the phone or through mail order – remained the biggest category of losses at £395.7m, although this figure was down also on the previous year.

UK Finance also revealed that fraud on lost and stolen cards increased by 30% to £100.2m, while card ID theft, where a criminal opens or takes over a card account in someone else’s name, almost doubled to £51.7m. Victims of unauthorised fraud cases such as these are legally protected against losses.

Authorised push payment (APP) fraud losses reached £485.2m, which was down 17% compared to 2021. Within this total, 57% of all reported cases related to purchase fraud, with case volumes breaking 100,000 for the first time. Investment fraud continued to be one of the largest proportion of APP losses (24%), although the report also showed there was a 34% reduction compared with 2021.

Overall, the amount of APP fraud losses reimbursed increased by 5% in 2022 compared to the previous year.

UK Finance chief executive, David Postings, commented: “Fraud has a devastating impact on victims and over £1.2bn was stolen by criminals last year. The banking and finance sector is at the forefront of efforts to tackle this criminal activity. The sector spends billions on detection and prevention and also refunds people who have fallen victim, even if the fraud originated outside the banking system.

“Our data also makes clear just how much fraud emanates from online platforms and through telecommunications. The government’s new fraud strategy rightly says we need to focus on stopping it at source and that these other sectors need to do far more to tackle the problem they are facilitating.”

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