UK Fraud Strategy 2026–29 Targets AI-Driven Fraud

The UK government is preparing a Fraud Strategy for 2026–2029 that would expand responsibilities for banks, fintech firms, telecommunications companies and online platforms in response to rising use of AI-generated identities, deepfakes and real-time attacks on payments and digital services. Regulators and industry participants are moving toward a system-wide approach that emphasizes faster intelligence sharing, stronger identity controls and new governance for instant payments and digital markets.

The strategy remains under development. A webinar on June 9 will preview elements of the plan and outline the threats the government and industry expect to address at the NextGen FinCrime event on July 8 in London. Panelists scheduled to appear include Robert Eastick, director and crypto lead at iSanctuary; Dr. Roger Miles, a consulting behavioral analyst; and Zaheer Jassat, vice president of product at Zepz.

Officials drafting the strategy expect firms to detect early signals of criminal innovation rather than rely mainly on reactive measures. That expectation would require banks and fintechs to expand monitoring across payment flows, digital identity checks, crypto markets and online ecosystems. Regulators are also seeking clearer rules on how telecom carriers and platforms must share data and assist investigations when accounts, SIMs or digital profiles are abused in fraud chains.

Current data-sharing models present barriers to faster intelligence flows, industry participants say. Fragmented data standards, legal and privacy constraints, delays between detection and reporting, and limited integration of cross-sector alert feeds reduce the timeliness and usefulness of shared information. Those gaps make it harder to spot emerging techniques such as synthetic identities assembled from fragmented identity attributes and AI tools producing realistic impersonations in real time.

Security teams are promoting wider adoption of technologies aimed at earlier detection. Predictive analytics, behavioral biometrics and cloud-native fraud platforms can detect anomalies in session behavior, device signals and transaction patterns that static checks miss. Tokenization and stronger cryptographic protections for payment credentials and identity attributes are being proposed to reduce the value of stolen data. Firms will need to weigh those controls against customer experience requirements for instant payments.

Identity systems are under particular pressure. Synthetic IDs and AI-driven impersonation exploit weak onboarding processes and siloed identity checks. Measures discussed include stronger multi-factor authentication that incorporates passive behavioral signals, device binding and cross-channel identity linking, along with interoperable identity standards and faster cross-industry lookup services to validate attributes before fraud chains progress.

Instant payments create governance and operational challenges because funds can move rapidly across providers. Proposed measures include real-time risk scoring at the point of payment, liability frameworks to clarify responsibilities among senders, payment service providers and platforms, and automated controls that can pause suspicious flows without blocking legitimate users. Those controls require investment in low-latency detection systems and clearer procedures for escalation and information sharing.

Speakers preparing for the July event also point to risks from digital assets and decentralized finance. Crypto markets introduce new transaction types and cross-border rails that complicate monitoring, and quantum computing poses longer-term risks to current cryptographic protections. Firms handling digital assets are being advised to map exposure to anti-money-laundering and fraud obligations, upgrade transaction surveillance for on-chain and off-chain activity, and plan for cryptographic agility.

Policy discussions ahead of the strategy focus on faster collaboration between government and the private sector, standardized data formats, targeted technology investment and clearer governance for cross-channel fraud response. The webinar and the NextGen FinCrime sessions will present operational details on how those arrangements might work.