Only five of 18 countries analysed by FICO reported a drop in fraudulent card activity in 2020
LONDON, June 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --
Highlights:
- UK cuts fraud losses by 7% (£46 million) year-on-year
- Denmark and Hungary help support overall reduction of card fraud in Europe
- Norway faced biggest scale of attacks with 172% year-on-year increase
- France, Germany and Poland also saw card fraud levels increase
In a year that presented fraudsters with new opportunities to exploit consumers, UK financial institutions continued to lead the charge across Europe in thwarting the criminals. New data from FICO's European Fraud Map shows that the UK achieved the greatest fall in card fraud monetary losses, dropping 7 percent and £46 million year-on-year.
For more information, visit https://www.fico.com/europeanfraud
"Fraudsters are constantly scanning for access to poorly protected accounts and opportunities to manipulate transactions and this is what made 2020 such a challenge," said Matt Cox, vice president for financial services in EMEA at FICO. "Fraud teams would have faced wave after wave of sophisticated COVID and Brexit scams, which makes the success of UK financial institutions - protecting Brits' finances - even more impressive.
UK Led European Fraud Reduction
While Europe enjoyed a sizable £54M drop in fraud loss for 2020, this was primarily driven by two countries, accounting for a reduction of £78 million between them. The United Kingdom achieved a £46M reduction (7 percent year-on-year); Denmark recorded a €21M decrease (48 percent).
"After achieving the largest single reduction of any European country in 2019, the banks of the UK have repeated this, with the best net reductions of the 18 countries in this report for the second year running," noted Toby Carlin, a senior director of fraud consulting at FICO. "In an incredibly challenging year, only five of the 18 countries analysed by FICO achieved a reduction in card fraud."
Hungary also made significant progress. It achieved the third best reduction in fraud loss of the studied countries, reducing fraud levels by €2M (39 percent).
"Whilst it is incredibly positive for so many countries to have made gains through such a challenging period, with Turkey, Spain and the Czech Republic all showing a relatively flat trend through 2020, more needs to be done across the other European states to drive a truly collaborative reduction in all areas," concluded Cox.
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