Banks and fraudsters are engaged in a never-ending game of cat and mouse. On one side, fraudsters move money around to remove traces of criminality. On the other, banks are on the lookout for suspicious activity that indicates financial fraud. "Criminals put money through the financial system in a series of layers to mask its original source, getting to a point where that money is cleaned and can be used and integrated into the financial system for any kind of purchase or investment," says Livia Benisty, chief business officer and former global head of AML at, Banking Circle – a payments bank that is pioneering the use of AI in AML. Money laundering regulations require banks and financial services to demonstrate methods for spotting this behaviour.

Great Britain is the fraud capital of the world, according to a Daily Mail investigation published in June. The study calculated that 40 million adults have been targeted by scammers this year. In April, a reported £700m was lost to fraud, compared to an average of £200m per month in 2021. As well as using convincing ruses, scammers are increasingly sophisticated cybercriminals. If the UK does go into recession, as predicted, then the level of attacks is likely to increase even further.