In 2025, more than 444,000 fraud cases were recorded on the National Fraud Database, the highest annual total ever reported by Cifas. The UK’s Fraud Strategy 2026–29 rightly recognises the scale of this challenge, and much of the industry’s attention remains focused on the most visible threats: unauthorised payments, fake IDs and anomalous transactions. Yet the most scalable, least-detected and most preventable fraud occurs much earlier: at the point of application.