TSB has shared an urgent warning to households over what it described as prolific impersonation fraud, which has surged by more than 300 per cent since 2019 according to figures from UK Finance.

Since the start of the year, a third of fraud cases at the bank have been perpetrated by criminals impersonating an employee from the organisation to trick people into sending them money.

TSB, which introduced a fraud refund guarantee in April 2019, said that the average case across the financial industry sees a near £4,000 loss.

Data from the organisation found that more than half – 55 per cent – of losses were by people pretending to be from a bank.

13 per cent of cases were by criminals impersonating different authorities – 40 per cent were pretending to be the police, 38 per cent HMRC, and 13 per cent the National Crime Agency.

A further nine per cent are people impersonating phone and internet providers – with 47 per cent pretending to be from BT, 21 per cent from Virgin Media, and 19 per cent from Sky.

Delivery fraud made up 8 per cent – with Royal Mail being the most impersonated company at 70 per cent, Hermes was next at 18 per cent, followed by DPD at nine per cent.

Amazon fraud accounted for seven per cent of total impersonation fraud.

“Households are bombarded with scam calls, texts and emails every day – we're urging them to remain suspicious of any unsolicited contact, to avoid falling victim to fraud at a time when the impact would be hardest felt,” said Paul Davis, director of fraud prevention, TSB. “We continue to be the only bank to protect customers from fraud losses, through our Fraud Refund Guarantee, which is as important now as it’s ever been to the lives of our customers."

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