The research, which has polled financial crime professionals around the world, has revealed that as banks struggle to lower their spending, the budget cuts could end up making customers increasingly vulnerable to criminal attack. Thus, 71 percent of respondents say fraud attacks against their business have increased over the past year. Moreover, 67 percent of interviewees also indicate their financial losses to fraud have grown over the same period. For 22 percent of respondents, the growth in fraud losses has been greater than 20 percent.
At the same time, around a third of respondents have seen their financial crime prevention budgets reduced. For some, those cuts have been dramatic: 12 percent say they have lost a quarter of their anti-money laundering (AML) budget. 50 percent of interviewees agree that general cost-cutting across their organisations is weakening their defences.
The annual survey of financial crime fighting activities was carried out by financial crime and compliance software company Norkom.
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