In December, we sat down with Naftali Harris (Sentilink) and Dr. Justin Keene (Moveris)—who gave a dynamic presentation at last year’s LEND360 CEO lunch—to discuss the latest fraud trends targeting lenders. Today, we’ll continue that trend by taking a deep dive into a landmark new report from Nasdaq Verafin which paints a sobering picture of the scale and sophistication of the threat posed by the explosive growth of financial crime and fraud. Nasdaq Verafin is a trusted financial crime management partner to more than 2,750 financial institutions and the report offers important insights for online lenders and fintech companies looking to protect their businesses and their customers.
The full Nasdaq Verafin 2026 Global Financial Crime Report outlines $4.4 trillion in global illicit financial activity in 2025, an increase of $1.3 trillion since 2023. Much of this was driven by drug trafficking activity ($1.1 trillion), human trafficking ($528.5 billion), and terrorist financing ($16.2 billion). For the LEND360 audience, however, it’s worth examining the $579.4 billion in global losses from bank fraud (unauthorized transactions) and fraud scams (where victims are manipulated into authorizing payments). These findings carry direct implications for every company in the online lending ecosystem.
The critical takeaway is the rate of change: while bank fraud losses grew at 8.2 percent annually, fraud scams grew at 19.3 percent. This reflects a fundamental shift in how criminals operate: as banks and lenders have strengthened institutional controls, fraudsters have adapted by targeting customers directly through social engineering, authorized push payment (APP) fraud, investment scams, romance scams, and increasingly sophisticated phishing campaigns.
To learn more, we spoke with Greg Williamson, Head of Fraud Commercial Strategy at Nasdaq Verafin, on what the report’s findings mean for the lending ecosystem. Greg has more than two decades’ experience in fraud and identity management, with expertise in fraud strategy, cyber fraud prevention, and global digital identity solutions. Prior to joining Nasdaq Verafin, he led the Bank Policy Institute’s fraud prevention program. Our interview with him is below.
Thank you for joining us to help our audience better understand the findings of your report and the various fraud and scam risks that are on the rise. The report estimates $4.4 trillion in global illicit financial activity in 2025, with fraud losses alone surpassing half a trillion dollars. Can you help put these numbers in context for leaders at online lending and fintech companies? What should they take away from the scale of this problem?
Greg Williamson: I think the biggest take away from our report is that the growing scale and complexity of criminal threats are pushing the financial crime epidemic to new heights.
Lenders and fintechs need to understand that the nature of today’s threat has completely changed, and the interconnected nature of the financial ecosystem means it’s going to take a coordinated response to overcome.
The report found that fraud scams where victims are manipulated into authorizing payments are growing at more than double the rate of traditional bank fraud. What is driving that shift and what does it mean for companies in the lending space that may have historically focused their fraud defenses on unauthorized transactions?
Williamson: The growth of fraud scams represents a major shift in the fraud landscape.
Fraud will always follow the path of least resistance, and criminals have determined that it’s easier to target consumers than the institutions themselves. While banks have done a good job building defenses against unauthorized fraud, it’s increasingly difficult to detect instances of fraud where the consumers are being coerced or deceived into sending the payment themselves.
So, what does that mean for lenders? It means a change in approach to fraud detection. Knowing whether or not your customer actually sent the payment is no longer good enough. There needs to be an understanding of why the customer sent a payment, and who they’re sending the payment to.
And then from there, you need to think about how you’re engaging with your customers to help them understand the risks associated with a certain transaction, and what you can do to break the spell that a fraudster may have over them.
An overwhelming majority of the financial crime professionals you surveyed reported an increase in AI-driven attacks. The report highlights scams-as-a-service and AI-enabled hyper scams as two particularly concerning developments. Can you walk us through what these look like in practice and how they are changing the threat landscape for lenders?
Williamson: The misuse of AI by bad actors has been a major driver of the rise of scams.
Criminals are using AI tools in the same way as any large enterprise in the sense that they’re trying to find ways to make themselves more efficient and operate at scale.
Both AI tools and the rise of things like scams-as-a-service have lowered the barrier to entry to becoming a fraudster. Fraudsters no longer need specialized expertise or to even speak the same language as the victims they’re targeting.
On top of that, criminals can use AI to make existing scams more effective, personalizing their attacks and creating more convincing deepfakes.
It’s a whole new ballgame, where you’re not only facing more frequent attacks, but they’re more effective and harder to detect than they have been in years past.
For companies in the online lending industry that are reading this report and thinking about what to do next, what are the two or three most important steps they should be taking right now to strengthen their defenses against the threats you’ve identified?
Williamson: I think there’s a couple important things that online lenders, fintechs, and other financial institutions can do to strengthen their defenses.
In world of faster, more effective fraud, data and AI are going to be your biggest tools.
With the rise of scams and authorized push payment fraud, it’s harder to detect what’s fraudulent and what’s legitimate. So, it becomes more important than ever to have the ability to see a full picture of risk beyond your own institution’s walls. Collaborative approaches like information sharing frameworks or solutions underpinned by consortium data networks can help identify fraudulent transactions you may have missed without a holistic look at counterparty risks.
AI tools and advanced analytics can help reduce false positive alerts, and the rise of agentic AI solutions can automate time-consuming workflows, allowing your team to focus on tackling complex investigations and engaging with customers, rather than clearing alerts.
And finally, updating your operational procedures to get better at engaging with customers to identify instances of authorized fraud. Often times, consumers don’t have the same insight into risks that we have, and with authorized fraud and scams, they don’t realize they’re being deceived. Institutions that are able to break the spell of a fraudster will be the ones who do the best job of protecting their consumers.
Thank you for joining us to share your expertise with the LEND360 audience.
