UK Fraud Strategy 2026-29: Banks, Fintechs, Platforms Must Share

The UK Fraud Strategy 2026-29 will require banks, fintechs, telcos and online platforms to share intelligence more widely, tighten digital identity systems and introduce controls for instant payments as criminal techniques change.

Officials and industry experts will outline the approach in a webinar on June 9 ahead of the NextGen FinCrime conference on July 8 in London. Panel participants include Robert Eastick, director and crypto lead at iSanctuary; Dr Roger Miles, consulting behavioural analyst; Sandra Blaga, AI industry solutions lead at Swift; with Teresa Connors as moderator.

The strategy responds to a rise in cross-channel fraud and increased use of machine learning, synthetic identities and deepfakes by criminals. Regulators have flagged the need for a coordinated national response to fraud that moves quickly across payment rails, identity systems and online markets.

A central feature of the plan is early-warning intelligence. Firms will be asked to detect signals of criminal innovation and share them faster than present practice allows. Webinar organisers argue current data-sharing arrangements are too slow or too siloed to give authorities and businesses timely, cross-sector visibility.

The fraud types named in preparatory documents include exploitation of real-time payment systems, synthetic identity fraud, AI-driven impersonation and rising fraud linked to crypto and decentralized finance. Firms have access to defensive tools such as behavioural biometrics, predictive analytics, tokenization and cloud-native fraud platforms, but those tools depend on changes in governance, data sharing and investment to operate across sectors.

Speakers will highlight governance and operational changes that organisations should consider. Recommendations include clearer rules for intelligence exchange between private firms and law enforcement, faster mechanisms for cross-industry alerts, stronger identity verification that pairs document checks with behavioural signals, and monitoring systems for instant payments that can score and act on suspect activity without blocking legitimate customers.

Panel discussion will also address why current data-sharing approaches fall short. Problems identified include fragmented sources across banks, fintechs and platforms, slow legal and regulatory pathways for sharing sensitive information, and a lack of shared technical standards for real-time threat feeds. Closing these gaps will require investment in interoperable platforms and clearer legal frameworks that balance privacy with the need to disrupt fraud quickly.

The strategy includes emerging risks in digital assets and DeFi because on-chain flows and crypto market patterns increasingly intersect with traditional anti-money-laundering and fraud controls. The webinar agenda covers how firms can incorporate crypto risk into existing AML frameworks and notes longer-term concerns such as the potential impact of quantum computing on current cryptographic protections.

Organisers present the June 9 session as a primer for leaders in fraud prevention, compliance and digital strategy. The webinar will map short-term steps organisations can take-improving data pipelines, adopting behavioural and biometric checks and setting controls for real-time payments-and will identify areas where cross-industry collaboration and regulatory clarification remain necessary.