Cases of fraud in the UK have surged with criminals using AI to manipulate people and even marrying victims of romance scams to steal more money. More than four million cases in which money was lost were reported last year - the equivalent of nearly eight on average every minute, according to new figures. The total has increased by more than one million in two years, with almost £1.3bn The enormous scale of the problem could only be tackled if tech companies stepped up monitoring and security of their platforms, the banking trade body said. Banks said fraud posed a national security threat given the impact on victims and the huge sums stolen by organised criminals.

UK financial firms are increasingly using machine learning to help run their businesses, and are exploring ever more sophisticated techniques. Such innovation can improve financial services, but authorities must remain on top of the risks. Computer programmes can, with limited human intervention, recognise patterns from data and automatically make decisions. This is called machine learning (ML). Two thirds of UK banks, insurers and other financial services firms that we surveyed are already using ML to help run their businesses (Chart A).