The number of online fraud attacks nearly doubled in 2022, but UK fraudsters had a lower success rate compared to the rest of the world, research by LexisNexis Risk Solutions has found.

Approximately 36 million human-initiated fraud attacks were confirmed in the UK last year, a rise of 92% compared to 2021. This increase was slower globally, reaching an increase of 56%.

Despite the increasing fraud volumes, the UK saw lower rates of successful fraud attempts as a proportion of overall transaction (0.2%), compared to 1.3% across the rest of the world. LexisNexis state that this is due to a world-leading fraud prevention market.

The firm also states that high-levels of mobile and app-based online banking service adoption is also helping to reduce successful fraud attempts on UK customers, with almost nine in 10 (88%) of UK financial services transactions processed on mobile, with 89% of these
transactions occurring on apps.

The data from LexisNexis also shows that there were 352 million automated bot attacks in UK targets last year, an increase of 81%. This means that 2% of all online transactions in the UK was a bot attack.

Fraud and identity expert for LexisNexis Risk Solutions, UK & Ireland, Rob Woods, said: “These latest figures reveal a positive outlook for the UK’s ongoing fight against fraud. Despite rising overall volumes, this analysis shows that the UK’s highly-evolved and tech-enabled fraud prevention market is successfully mitigating fraud such as large scale thirdparty fraud, that is causing significant pain elsewhere in the world.

“Inevitably, other fraud typologies are emerging to fill this vacuum, including first party fraud – now a big problem in the UK. However, with continued adoption of AI-powered fraud analysis and shared intelligence, as well as more people accessing online services through secure mobile and app channels, the UK financial services sector is helping to significantly reduce the impact of fraud on its customers.

“As fraud attacks continued to increase during the past 18 months, financial institutions have responded well by focusing more on building trust with their loyal customer base, leading to higher levels of ‘trusted customer traffic’ that can be quickly authenticated and given access to online services, leaving more capacity for banks to focus on detecting and preventing malicious traffic.”

“However, whilst fraud attack rates are lower in the UK, they increased at a faster rate last year – at 44% compared to 20% globally – meaning that although the news is positive, businesses cannot afford to be complacent.”

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