NEED TO PROOFREAD QUESTION1 AND NEED TO DO ALL THE PARTS OF QUESTIONS 2

Need to proofread Question1 and need to do all the parts of Questions 2

Need to proofread Question1 and need to do all the parts of Questions 2

Question 1

Introduction

Fraud, and its associated losses, continues to be a major problem for the financial institutions both in the UK and worldwide. Latest statistics have shown that the cost of fraud in the UK is estimated at £14 billion per year (NFS, 2009). Fraud is committed in many ways and affects all sections of society. Whether it is an individual victim whose credit card is skimmed or a financial institutions computer system being abused, everyone suffers. The amount lost through fraud and the expense needed to combat fraud effectively represents a cost to society. The full price of fraud is not just financial or economic. It also causes emotional and psychological harm to individuals and damages businesses. Fraud also undermines public confidence and fairness and is often used to fund serious criminal activity such as illegal drug, human trafficking and terrorism (NFS, 2009).

Fraud prevention is now the major focus of the Financial Services Authority and the UK Government as well as many other organisations in the UK such as APACS, DCPCU, SOCA, CIFAS that work in the fight against fraud. For the purpose of this assignment the organisations that work for the prevention of card fraud in the UK economy will only be examined. Card fraud has a continuous and fast changing nature with a high number of people being defrauded each day resulting in high costs to the individuals and the society. Last year alone £609,9 millions of plastic card losses were reported on UK issued cards (APACS, The Fraud Facts, 2009).

UK Initiatives

In order to achieve this co-ordinated activity The National Fraud Authority has launched the first national fraud reporting centre in October 2009, named Action Fraud. Action Fraud is designed to simplify fraud reporting and aims to make the process easier for victims. Victims can report any type of fraud either by phone or through its website where they can get guidance and the most up to date advice. Through the Action Fraud the levels of reported fraud cases are expected to increase thus increasing the knowledge of fraud. According to Ally Cook the Head of Action Fraud 'the best way to fight fraud is to get people talking about it'. The efforts of The Action Fraud reporting center is proven to be successful with more and more people reporting their fraud cases. Calls to the center have increased 300% since January 2010 (Fraud Focus,2010).

The UK payments industry fully supports the NFA's approach to tackle fraud and it works with the NFA to share best practice. This joined approach enables the UK Card Association to effectively tackle the organised gangs behind the majority of card fraud losses.The UK Cards Association inherits from the APACS Card Payments Group a tradition of managing high profile, pioneering industry initiatives on plastic card fraud ...