Report

It’s a fraudster’s world

This report from UK think tank the Social Market Foundation explores the scale, impact, and globally interconnected nature of fraud against consumers.

Fraud is a growing problem around the world.

This report provides a sense of the scale of fraud across 15 countries, highlights the need for international collaboration to make a meaningful impact on fraud and identifies key obstacles hindering counter-fraud efforts and how to overcome them. 5% of adults in the 15 countries surveyed (equivalent to 228 million people) fell victim to fraud at least once between 2021 and 2023, equating to 76 million victims a year on average. The typical loss per victim was £1,060, though there was significant variation between countries, with Singapore highest (£2,113) and Brazil lowest (£282).

According to our Fraud Threat Prevalence Index drawing on the results of the survey, the UK suffered the second lowest fraud threat of the 15 countries surveyed between 2021 and 2023, with Singapore performing worst. However, fraud remains a significant problem in the UK, costing 10 million victims around £16 billion between 2021 and 2023.

Given the global scale of the fraud threat, there was a widespread consensus among the experts we interviewed that governments’ approach to fraud needs to reflect the interdependency between countries, but collective action problems have prevented the necessary collaboration from taking place.