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.

Financial services compliance is a big area. Prajit Nanu, CEO of B2B payments platform Nium, says it's in everybody's interest that payment transactions are as frictionless as possible, but many commonly used payment systems carry unnecessary layers of complexity, including when ensuring regulations and compliance. He says automation can help to resolve lags arising from risk and compliance checks, which can be a time-consuming and labour-intensive process, particularly for those dealing with cross region, cross country checks. An automated payment platform appropriately integrated with other business software can perform these checks much more seamlessly. Nanu says: "Digital tools, such as individualised transaction profiles, coupled with the output of machine learning processes, will be able to offer real-time solutions which significantly reduce the time required for risk and compliance checks, while still allowing effective identity verification and fraud detection checks."

'Nudging', for example, has been used in financial services. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) uses the term in a positive sense to encourage pension providers to nudge consumers to consult guidance before accessing their pension savings. However, a nudge may take various other forms. It could be that a product is designed so that the customer is provided with additional information when a specific life-event occurs. It may be that another product changes its default settings in response to a customer's spending or savings habits.