Innovate Finance has urged the government to establish a national anti-fraud centre for cross-sector data sharing.

The industry body for UK FinTech also called for the introduction of shared liability for social media and telecommunications companies when tackling fraud originating on their platforms, a move that would involve updating the current Online Safety Act.

The organisation said that the UK should have a “world-first” data sharing approach across sectors, regulators and the law enforcement industry in order to "industrialise the UK’s use of technology to spot and stop fraud" and enable all financial firms – whether large or small – to access and use these solutions.

According to Innovate Finance, current initiatives with national crime agencies and industry focus on a few large firms rather than the UK's wider financial services sector.

“This plan sets out how we can harness technology via data sharing to strengthen collaboration between industry and law enforcement," said Janine Hirt, chief executive, Innovate Finance. "Current data sharing initiatives, while effective, operate in silos, which can make it difficult in practice.

"Critically, there is nothing in place with the critical mass or scale required to crush organised fraud. There is widespread agreement that establishing a National Anti Fraud Centre would be the appropriate vehicle to deliver this."

Innovate Finance said that the fraud centre should include central leadership across the variety of data-sharing schemes to tackle fraud at the source and prevent scams from happening.

As well as this, the organisation's strategy suggests effective data sharing, collection, and analysis between finance firms, regulators, law enforcement, technology platforms and telecoms networks to ensure "collective efforts are focused on preventing fraud and ending the asymmetry of data access."

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