Innovate Finance Wants The UK Government To Set Up A National Anti-Fraud Center
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The UK’s fintech trade body Innovate Finance recently called on the country’s government, asking it to create a new National Anti-Fraud Center. Innovate Finance believes that a new Center is necessary to monitor cross-sector data sharing and introduce shared liability for telecommunication firms and social media.
Its CEO, Janine Hirt, stated that cases involving fraud represent 40% of all crime, but they only receive 1% of police resources, which is not nearly enough to tackle this problem adequately.
She noted that the scale of the threat posed to consumers and businesses alike demands a more collaborative, targeted, and effective strategy that aspires to smash fraud in the country.
What Is Innovate Finance Actually Proposing?
Hirt went on to explain that the plan proposed by Innovate Finance has set out how to harness technology using data sharing to improve collaboration between the industry and law enforcement. This is necessary because current data-sharing initiatives, while effective, operate in silos.
That makes it difficult in practice. Furthermore, she added that there is nothing in place with the critical mass or scale needed to crush organized fraud. On the other hand, there is a widespread agreement that creating a National Anti-Fraud Center would be an appropriate vehicle to deliver this.
Now, the trade body wants the government to establish central leadership across various data-sharing initiatives, aligned with effective data-sharing, collection, and analysis between different finance companies, law enforcement, regulators, tech platforms, and telecom networks.
Hirt also believes that it is necessary to update the laws, such as the Online Safety Act 2023, to make tackling crime a shared responsibility where social media, telecommunications companies, and payment providers would participate together. To prevent any of these entities from allowing fraud on their platform, the strategy will also require the introduction of new shared liability rules, which would make sure that Big Tech social media and telecoms do more to tackle the issue.
