Menu Cifas Annual Report Cifas motif

Welcome to our Annual Report.

For the first year we are presenting our report entirely online. We hope you like the new format and would love your feedback.

Chair’s Message

A message from Ken Cherrett, Chair, Cifas
 

View Transcript

Title: Chair’s Message
Featuring: Ken Cherrett, Chair, Cifas

Year in Review: Collaboration

View Transcript

Title: Year in Review: Collaboration
Featuring: Mike Haley, Deputy Chief Executive, Cifas

In 2015 we collaborated with a wide range of organisations and individuals to strengthen fraud defences and protect victims. Our collaborative partners included members, government, law enforcement, regulators, academia, charities and a wide range of other partners.

Fraudsters don’t work in silos, neither can we.Our relationships with police and law enforcement agencies are particularly important to us and our members. We work with them to assist in the prevention of fraud; to support the disruption of criminal gangs; and to protect the public and the UK economy from the adverse effects of financial crime. In 2015 we continued with our secondment of a member of staff to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau and worked with the Home Office on the Joint Money Laundering Taskforce and on the plans for the more recently launched Joint Fraud Taskforce, a taskforce that works to bring industry and government together to fight fraud.

Read Article

Collaboration with our members
 

Our membership continued to grow in 2015, adding yet more data to our databases and enabling better intelligence sharing across sectors. We welcomed 60 new members in 2015, including StepChange Debt Charity, Barbon Insurance Group our first tenant vetting company – and OFGEM joining our growing list of public sector members. Over the course of the year our total membership grew by 11%.

Read Article

Read Article

Collaboration with Law Enforcement and the Home Office

Our relationships with police and law enforcement agencies are particularly important to us and our members. We work with them to assist in the prevention of fraud and financial crime; to support the disruption of criminal gangs; and to protect the public and the UK economy from the adverse effects of fraud and financial crime.

Read Article

Read Article

Our collaboration with government

In 2015, we continued to work closely with the Home Office on the implementation of the Immigration Act 2014. The Cifas Immigration Portal (CIP) has been operating since 2014 and continues to provide a valuable service, allowing 109 banks and building societies, who are not Cifas Members, to meet their requirements under the Immigration Act 2014.

Read Article

Read Article

Our collaboration on campaigns

2015 saw a step change in our activity to raise awareness of fraud and scams. We see collaboration as key to successful campaigns - consumers need to hear clear consistent messages and we will have more impact if we speak with one voice.

Read Article

Year in Review: Innovation

View Transcript

Title: Year in Review: Innovation
Featuring: Dan Beckett, Chief Technology Officer, Cifas

At Cifas we are constantly working to improve our systems to make sure our members benefit from fast, secure and innovative technology. Fraudsters are incredibly inventive: our defences must be inventive too.

In this section, our Chief Technology Officer, Dan Beckett, describes some of the key updates we made in 2015.

Read Article

Modernising the National Fraud Database

Both the Cifas National Fraud Database and Cifas Internal Fraud Database underwent extensive development in 2015 and a new version of our system was released in December. The new release is more intuitive and easier for members to navigate, file and search. Developments included a new feature to help members uncover wider networks of organised crime and investigate the links between frauds in more depth.

Read Article

Read Article

Using Cifas data in new and innovative ways

Cifas members typically use Cifas data at application stage. This approach has prevented significant amounts of fraud, with members reporting £200 in prevented fraud for every £1 invested in Cifas membership. In 2015, we encouraged members to use Cifas in other parts of the customer lifecycle. Broader use of fraud data in this way will help to identify even more fraud.

Read Article

Year in Review: Integrity

View Transcript

Title: Year in Review: Integrity
Featuring: Anne Sheedy, Director of Compliance and Best Practice

At Cifas, we operate the largest cross-sector fraud prevention databases in the UK. This means we are responsible for storing personal information and records of large numbers of people. Integrity is fundamental to what we do: we are the custodians of data and we have a responsibility to handle data securely and safely, to open ourselves to scrutiny, and to act in the public interest. We are working to increase our profile and in 2015 we saw significant increases in enquiries, website visits, media coverage and subject access requests. Ensuring that increasing numbers of people are aware of Cifas and its work will help us to support those who seek our advice in preventing fraud or want to find out more about the data we hold.

In 2015, the Information Commissioner’s Office published the results of an audit of Specified Anti-Fraud Organisations in the UK, including a successful audit of Cifas. We also reviewed the way we monitor our members’ use of data – our Member Compliance programme. This review resulted in plans to expand our current compliance operation to create a bigger “Compliance and Best Practice” team to work with our members. This new team will also focus on sharing learning more effectively across the membership so that all of the businesses we work with are supported to handle fraud data effectively and efficiently – ultimately preventing more fraud against their own business and customers.

In the rest of this section we look at how Cifas is governed, how we manage member compliance and how we dealt with enquiries or complaints from the public in 2015.

Read Article

Changing the way we are governed

In 2015 the Cifas Board commissioned an independent review of the way Cifas is governed. In the 25 years since Cifas was founded, we have grown from a small credit industry group into the UK’s leading fraud prevention organisation, working with more 350 businesses spanning the public, private and charity sectors.

Read Article

Read Article

How we assisted the public in 2015

The number of enquiries to Cifas and requests for information grew significantly in 2015. In total, we received 2,790 enquiries from the public and 1,242 Subject Access Requests. This compares to 1,823 and 1,046 respectively in 2014.

Read Article

Read Article

Cifas Member Compliance Reviews

Our compliance reviews are integral to maintaining high standards of data handling and ensuring that organisations are not only benefiting from accessing fraud information from others, they are also contributing information on their own fraud losses.

Read Article

Year in Review: Expertise

View Transcript

Title: Year in Review: Expertise
Featuring: Sandra Peaston, Assistant Director, Insight, Cifas

At Cifas, we are experts in sharing confirmed fraud data and intelligence. This section covers the core services we offer with this data and the trends we saw in 2015, including the research reports that we published.

We also explore the services we offer directly to the public – our Protective Registration and Protecting the Vulnerable services.

We believe our expertise comes not just from data and systems – but from our people. In line with this, we have included a section on our people under this value.

Read Article

Identity fraud dominates: 2015 fraud trends from our National Fraud Database

In 2015, our National Fraud Database enabled 261 organisations from a wide range of sectors to share data in the areas of identity crime and first party frauds, committed both by individuals and by companies. In addition, Cifas enabled our members to access a range of additional datasets (law enforcement alerts, deaths data from the General Register Office, fraudulent Royal Mail redirects, and Home Office immigration data) in order to determine risk and aid investigations.

Read Article

Read Article

Insider threats: 2015 fraud trends from our Internal Fraud Database

Our Internal Fraud Database helps organisations to ensure that they do not employ someone with a known history of committing fraud as well as acting as a strong deterrent for existing staff who may be tempted or coerced into committing fraud. The types of fraud we see are changing: while application fraud remains a major issue and theft of cash still happens, the theft of data is one of the biggest threats.

Read Article

Read Article

Research and training

At Cifas we carry out research projects every year to inform our members, our partners and the public about issues, trends and subjects to help inform fraud prevention strategies.

Read Article

Read Article

Protecting individuals from fraud

Cifas Protective Registration and Protecting the Vulnerable

With identity theft continuing to rise, demand for our Protective Registration Service grew significantly in 2015. The service works by registering a protective marker against the identity details of individuals who are at particular risk of identity fraud – usually because their details have been stolen, lost or hacked.

Read Article

Read Article

Our people

Cifas is lucky to have a committed and passionate workforce, with a high number of staff staying with the organisation for many years. We are a growing organisation and we want to attract talented, committed fraud prevention professionals.

Read Article

Finance and Downloads

Throughout 2015, there has been a continued focus on increasing the membership, while improving services and benefits to members. We remain committed to keeping both our cost base and subscriptions levels as low as possible, with our Board’s intent being that additional income generated in 2015 be used, at least in part, to minimise any future subscription increases.

 

Read Article

Cifas Vision to 2020
 

Cifas has a clear Vision to 2020: to be a more dynamic, innovative, collaborative and visible organisation.

Size: 125Kb

Download

Read Article

Directors’ report and financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2015

The directors present their report and the financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2015.

Size: 290Kb

Download

Downloads from Introduction and Overview

Video Transcript:

Title: Introduction and Overview, featuring Simon Dukes, CEO (138KB)

Infographic:

Title: An overview of the year (145KB)

Downloads from Chair’s Message

Video Transcript:

Title: Introduction and Overview, Ken Cherrett, Chair (129KB)

Downloads from Year in Review: Collaboration

Video Transcript:

Title: Year in Review: Collaboration, featuring Mike Haley (137KB)

Video Transcript:

Title: Collaboration with our members, the Business Engagement Team, featuring Gaby Devereux, Assistant Director, Engagement, Cifas and Lee D’Arcy, Director of Engagement, Cifas (140KB)

Infographic:

Title: Collaboration with our members (99KB)

Video Transcript:

Title: Collaboration with our members: Our Members (137KB)

Video Transcript:

Title: Collaboration with our members, featuring Commander Christopher Greany, National Coordinator for Economic Crime, The City of London Police (138KB)

Infographic:

Title: How Cifas collaborates with Law Enforcement (191KB)

Downloads from Year in Review: Innovation

Video Transcript:

Title: Year in Review: Innovation, featuring Dan Beckett, Chief Technology Officer (138KB)

Downloads from Year in Review: Integrity

Video Transcript:

Title: Year in Review: Integrity, featuring Anne Sheedy (135KB)

Infographic:

Title: Changing the way we are governed (198KB)

Downloads from Year in Review: Expertise

Video Transcript:

Title: Year in Review: Expertise, Sandra Peaston, Assistant Director, Insight, Cifas (137KB)

Infographic:

Title: Identity fraud dominates: 2015 fraud trends from our National Fraud Database (163KB)

Video Transcript:

Title: Our chief executive talking about internal fraud risks in 2015 (145KB)

Research & Reports:

Title: Cross-Sector Fraud Data Could Unlock Millions in Additional Insurance Savings (3MB)

Research & Reports:

Title: Employee Fraudscape (2015 edition) (1.63MB)

Research & Reports:

Title: Fraudscape: UK fraud trends (194KB)

Infographic:

Title: Research & Training: Training courses and delegates (232KB)

Infographic:

Title: Protecting individuals from fraud (136KB)