One in four caught out by current account fraud
Around a quarter of Brits have fallen victim to a fraud involving their current account, research out today has found.
Price comparison site USwitch also discovered that victims were parted with an average of £828, while one in five of those affected are still out of pocket following their bank's investigation.
Meanwhile, over half (59 per cent) of victims believe there is nothing they can do to prevent such scams taking place.
Targeting current accounts could be a particularly lucrative deal for fraudsters, as over half (55 per cent) of such accounts are used to stash savings.
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"Current accounts, with their switching incentives and higher interest rates, have become increasingly popular sanctuaries for our savings – making them rich pickings for fraudsters," said Tashema Jackson, money expert at USwitch.
"This puts a greater responsibility on banks to stay abreast of the latest tricks that fraudsters use to enable them to give their customers the right advice to protect themselves as well as putting processes in place which limit the chance of a fraudster escaping with any of the stolen cash."
According to figures from Financial Fraud Action UK released last month, there is now an incident of financial fraud once every 15 seconds in the UK, while the group also logged over a million episodes of people handing over personal details to scammers during the first six months of this year alone.