The CFIT has announced the formation of a new industry coalition aimed at combating economic crime through enhanced verification methods. This coalition intends to gather experts from various fields, including finance, technology, policy, and academia, to develop solutions for detecting and preventing fraud, particularly focusing on crimes like Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud.

The initiative comes in the context of a rising trend of economic crime in the UK, with nearly GBP 1.2 billion stolen from consumers in 2023 according to the 2024 edition of the UK Finance Annual Fraud Report. It's worth noting that a significant portion of these figures was attributed to APP fraud. CFIT's coalition aims to unite major stakeholders such as big tech providers, trade associations, banks, fintech firms, and credit agencies to explore collaborative strategies to enhance the resilience of the UK economy against fraud.

Participants in the coalition will conduct data-driven research and testing on various solutions to verify the legitimacy and identity of businesses engaging with financial services. The ultimate goal is to prevent businesses and consumers from falling victim to financial crimes while also enabling efficiency savings and reducing liability for financial service providers. This initiative follows the success of CFIT's previous coalition on Open Finance, which showcased the potential of data-sharing technology to improve financial outcomes for consumers and SMEs.

CFIT plans to announce the final lineup of partners for this new coalition over the summer and aims to provide interim findings by Q4 2024, with a final report expected in early 2025. CFIT officials emphasised the importance of addressing economic crime and making the financial services industry more robust by leveraging collaboration across sectors. The coalition has obtained support from organisations such as the Federation of Small Businesses and the City of London Corporation, highlighting the broad industry backing for this initiative.

More information about CFIT CFIT, established as a delivery body responsible for supporting financial innovation in the UK, convenes experts from various sectors to address challenges facing the fintech industry. As a private, non-profit organisation supported by public funding, CFIT aims to drive forward financial innovation and scale the UK fintech sector through collaborative efforts. In April 2024, CFIT announced that would chair a new taskforce designed to provide customers and businesses in the UK with an optimised suite of Open Finance solutions.

According to the announcement, the taskforce was developed on the foundation work done by the Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology (CFIT)’s knowledge of Open Finance. This process took place by providing recommendations to the UK Government on how the financial data and information can be safely unlocked in order to improve small and medium-sized enterprises' (SMEs) access to credit. .