Transparency data

Joint Fraud Taskforce board minutes: 22 March 2022

Updated 14 February 2023

Date: Tuesday, 22 March 2022
Location: Home Office and Virtual

Item 1: Welcome

1. The Security Minister welcomed attendees to the JFT, introduced colleagues from the Devolved Administrations in Scotland and Wales and summarised key developments since the last meeting.

Item 2: Update on Retail Banking and Telecoms Sector Charters

2. The Security Minister introduced the item and invited sector representatives to provide progress updates.

UK Finance - Retail banking charter

3. Charter actions are progressing with the biggest progress being Action 5 - explore opportunities to enhance fraud prevention and repatriation of funds to victims.

CCSG - Telecommunications Charter

4. The sector has commenced implementation of technical solutions against bulk SMS which has seen a reduction in smishing. Work continues to ensure the SMS network filters are fully implemented.

5. It was commented that it is important to continue to join up the various communications campaigns so that people knew how to report and how to protect themselves from cyber enabled fraud.

OFSG

6. OFSG have agreed on four areas of activity, including threat assessment, online advertising, information sharing and education & communication. Tech companies are working with UK Finance to coordinate campaigns and make advertising safer.

Item 3: The Fraud Strategy

7. The Home Office described a 10-year Fraud Strategy which has been developed from the initial three-year fraud action plan.

8. To support the design of the Strategy, the Home Office has held workshops with key stakeholders. One of the aims of the workshops was to better understand what the 10-year picture would look like. Workshop participants expected fraud would continue to rise, that barriers to entry might get lower and that a principles-based approach to legislation was needed.

9. Three main themes emerged from the workshops:

a) Improving education so that people know how to protect themselves;

b) Better law enforcement and prosecution rates; and

c) Consideration about what more we can do internationally.

10. The Security Minister reiterated the need to move forward from the three-year plan that is now funded, to the long-term strategy. He set out three questions for discussion.

Question 1: What should the balance of responsibilities be between the public, industry, and law enforcement?

11. In discussion, the following points were mentioned:

• there is a need to consider consumer vulnerability and how it changes over time. Industry and government should have responsibility for protecting vulnerable people
• it is important to promote fraud education and provide consumers with tools to protect themselves
• information sharing is also important because data analysis will help industry understand how we can use technology to tackle fraud
• there was a call for ‘positive lists’ to enable consumers to know who they can trust and faster progress on digital identity. This won’t offer complete security, but it could help to tackle online fraud, especially counterfeit transactions online. The ideas of using AI to spot potential frauds and the need for faster progress on digital identity were also raised
• fraudsters use tactics seen in other online crimes such as grooming to target victims. We should exploit what we’ve learned in these areas to develop ways to increase resilience of people against fraud. We need to think about enablers and how to make it difficult for criminals to reoffend
• we are experiencing a blurring of lines between gambling, investment, and entertainment when it comes to crypto. It was also asked whether we have the messaging right when it comes to crypto
• role of government is not just legislation but also setting the context and culture
• we need to make it more expensive to commit fraud

Question 2: What should be the goal for industry-industry information and data sharing?

12. In discussion, the following points were mentioned:

• there is a need to find a legal mechanism to allow banks to communicate amongst themselves and repatriate funds
• it was commented that we needed to balance reimbursement with responsibility on consumers
• we need to clear what data members want shared and how it will be used given DPA and GDPR constraints
• fraudsters move to new scams constantly and it is difficult to keep regulatory framework up to date. We need to inform policy making about emerging risks and what we need as industry
• the UK is ahead of the game in terms of data sharing, but we work in silos. We need to improve public-private sector data sharing and data alliances could be beneficial to this
• we also need to consider international aspect and complexities of sharing data with international companies.
• we need to ensure law enforcement have capacity to process and make use of data

Question 3: How can we collectively lead the international response?

13. In discussion, the following points were mentioned:

• it was noted that there is a significant cross-border element to fraud
• private sector may already have data they could provide which may assist
• it was asked if, from a banking perspective, there was a bigger role for international collaboration on fraud
• the bilateral relations we have are an important addition to what can be done through Interpol

14. The Security Minister concluded the meeting.