The Payment Expert Podcast is joined by Oliver Hanmer of Capgemini to discuss the UK’s new fraud strategy and why telecommunications and social media platforms need to carry more of the load
In the latest episode of the Payment Expert Podcast, Oliver Hanmer, Managing Director, UK FCC Advisory Practice at Capgemini, argues the burden of fraud has landed too heavily on banks while the sectors where most fraud originates face few comparable obligations.
A regulator for two decades, including a spell at the UK’s Payment Systems Regulator (PSR), he reflects on the mood at the Global Anti-Scam Summit in Lisbon and where the UK’s approach still falls short.
Banks pay, platforms don’t
For Hanmer, the central problem is a misalignment of incentives between financial services and the telecommunications and social media platforms where the majority of fraud begins.
Under the Authorised Push Payment (APP) Reimbursement Scheme, which came into force in October 2024, banks and other payment service providers are required to refund victims of APP fraud, giving them a strong financial incentive to invest in prevention. No equivalent obligation falls on the platforms where much of that fraud originates.
“While there is still that misalignment, you’re not going to see the same amount of commitment from social media [and] telecommunication platforms,” he says.
He credits the UK national fraud strategy with beginning to address this by recognising fraud as a national security priority, and welcomes the Online Crime Centre (OCC) as a step towards better intelligence sharing.
Even so, he believes greater regulation is the only route to real progress, while acknowledging the tension these platforms face between fraud controls and the frictionless customer experience they trade on, a trade-off banks have already had to learn to manage.
His view, he says, has changed little since moving from the regulator to an advisory role, where he regularly made the case that telecommunications companies needed to do more.
Naming and shaming as a lever?
Hanmer sets out two ways to incentivise other sectors: a reimbursement regime similar to the one in financial services, or the public release of performance data.
He recalls banks paid close attention to the league table the PSR published, with those near the bottom concerned about the impact on their competitiveness. The same approach could work for platforms in other industries, such as social media and telecommunication, where public opinion carries weight.
Fraud: Fighting AI with AI
Hanmer welcomes the UK’s fraud strategy as a good start but questions whether it can be delivered, noting the UK does not have a strong record of turning strategy into outcomes quickly, while fraudsters move fast and are not held back by governance.
How quickly a threat emerges compared with how quickly an institution can respond is where he sees the greatest risk, and where he believes AI matters most.
“You need to fight AI with AI,” Capgemini’s Hanmer says, pointing to fraudsters using the technology to create synthetic identities and fake documentation.
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