Fraud Prevention Requires Collaboration: Insights from Cifas Member Forum

Fraud prevention can no longer rely on institutional walls. That message unified discussions at Cifas's recent Member Forum, where the UK's fraud prevention community gathered at the Royal College of Physicians in London. When threats move across borders in seconds, defences must be just as coordinated.

The ThirdEye team connected with financial crime professionals throughout the day, sharing early details of our forthcoming collaboration with Cifas and discussing with attendees how partnerships and shared intelligence strengthen the industry's collective defence against fraud. 

Trust is Key in Fraud Prevention 

The opening keynote framed a simple yet urgent message: trust remains the currency in fraud prevention, and the agenda of the day continued to emphasise this: 

• A welcome from Mike Haley, Cifas CEO, highlighted how data sharing and collaboration underpin defence efforts. 
• A keynote address from Government and policing figures underlined the scale of the challenge: global fraud, technology-enabled attacks, and the “moving target” that is consumer trust. 
• A panel on quantifying the international threat brought together senior voices from the Home Office, the National Economic Crime Centre, and press/investigative agencies. The consensus: fraud crosses borders, and our defences must too. 

The Fraud Kill Chain Reveals Where to Fight Back

A particularly insightful session examined the 'fraud kill chain'.  This is a framework that breaks down how fraud happens in order that organisations can pinpoint where to intervene and disrupt or stop it. Essentially, every fraud has a lifecycle, and if you can disrupt one link in the chain you can stop the fraud. 

Key in this process is collaboration. No single organisation has visibility of the whole fraud chain, so sharing intelligence is necessary to fill in the gaps.  

Fraudsters understand this methodology too. It only takes one weak link to make the whole chain vulnerable, but when the links are strong and well connected, it becomes stronger and more resilient.  

Technology Amplifies Human Expertise 

Effective fraud prevention relies on technology and human expertise working together. Advanced tools (AI, biometrics, real-time analytics) enable rapid detection and pattern recognition at scale. Skilled professionals provide context, interpret complex cases, and manage social engineering risks that machines struggle to identify. 

The forum reinforced that trust remains the currency in fraud prevention, requiring both technological capability and human understanding of customer behaviour and regulatory expectations. 

Proactive Strategies for Financial Crime Prevention 

As several speakers emphasised, fraud prevention is no longer about each institution standing guard behind its own wall. The threat moves too quickly and too fluidly to be contained in isolation. It’s more like holding back a rising tide: one organisation can build a wall, but the water will simply find another route. 

Real protection comes when financial institutions and regulators connect their defences by sharing intelligence, coordinating responses, and raising the collective barrier together. When one organisation spots an emerging pattern and feeds that signal into the wider network, everyone downstream becomes safer. 

Collaboration in fraud prevention is not just compliance or information exchange; it’s a shared infrastructure of resilience. The flood doesn’t respect boundaries, and neither should our defences. 

What This Means for Financial Crime Professionals: 

The Cifas Member Forum demonstrated that fraud prevention is evolving from isolated institutional efforts to connected, intelligence-driven collaboration 

Financial crime professionals should focus on three areas: 

• Combining technology with expertise - the industry must move from a reactive to a proactive approach, emphasising real time monitoring and early intervention. 
• Building collaborative defences - organisations should actively engage in intelligence sharing networks to strengthen collective resilience; and 
• Anticipating regulatory expectations - firms need to anticipate and prepare for increasing regulatory expectations around financial crime, fraud prevention and governance.  

As the threat landscape continues to shift, our collective resilience depends on shared intelligence, coordinated action, and a commitment to innovation. The industry has what it needs: strong partnerships, skilled teams, and the right tools in place to protect consumers and the financial ecosystem. 

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Claire Rees is a Financial Crime Regulatory Specialist in the UK for Jade ThirdEye. Claire has over 25 year's experience working in Risk Management roles in financial services, 20 years of which were spent specialising in Financial Crime Prevention in a number of senior roles including as Nominated Officer, Deputy MLRO and Head of Fraud and AML. Claire has participated in a number of regulatory and industry Financial Crime panels including a Government AML advisory panel and the Cifas Insider Threat Advisory Board which explored ever-changing insider fraud threats.