LexisNexis® has officially published the results from its latest report named LexisNexis® True Cost of Fraud™ Study 2025 North America.
Going by the available details, this particular report goes on to showcase that 44% of North American financial institutions (FIs) primarily rely on manual processes, hesitating to fully embrace AI and combat fraud. More on the same would reveal how it was discovered that, since 2021, fraud has increased across all financial services segments in North America, now averaging more than $5 for every $1 lost to fraud, up 25% from $4.00 only four years ago.
Markedly enough, out of all the surveyed US financial services firms, 30% of fraud was found at new account creation, 31% occurring within transaction activity, and 39% during account login or access. Only 45% of FIs track fraud across both payment methods and transaction channels, whereas on the other hand, 25% track it only across transaction channels. Against that, 28% emerged as focused solely on payment methods.
Nearly half of FIs (44%) were also found to rely mostly or entirely on manual processes, while only 20% are mostly or fully automated.
“Fraud is a dynamic, escalating threat that touches every corner of an FI’s operations. However, FIs don’t need simply accept it as a cost of doing business,” said Kimberly Sutherland, global head of fraud and identity at LexisNexis Risk Solutions. “Our latest study reveals that as fraud losses climb, many organizations still depend on manual processes that fail to match today’s sophisticated attacks. Leading FIs with the lowest fraud costs adopt automation, AI and cross-channel visibility to detect more fraud faster through a multi-layered approach. Importantly, they attain this while preserving the experience for genuine customers.”
Taking an even deeper view of LexisNexis’ report, we begin from the fact that scams were deemed to be responsible for 38% of total fraud losses for US lenders and 36% of overall fraud losses across all FIs.
Next up, a sizeable 44% of all the surveyed respondents would go on to identify bots as a major hurdle in verifying customer identities online and via mobile channels. 48% respondents even report a rise in monthly bot attacks over the past year.
Another detail worth a mention is rooted in piece of data claiming how mobile fraud represents a major risk, accounting for over a third of total fraud losses across FIs. From that lot, US FIs are the most vulnerable, with mobile fraud increasing among financial services and remaining steady or slightly declining among lenders.
In fact, a staggering seventy percent (70%) of US organizations reported that mobile fraud increased at least 10% in the last 12 months.
Hold on, we still have a couple of bits left to unpack, considering we haven’t yet touched upon how, over the past 12 months, 71% of US lenders and 78% of Canadian lenders reported higher customer churn due to fraud prevention strategies. Hence, balancing robust protection with a lower friction for trusted customers remains a critical challenge.
Rounding up highlights would be the fact that fraud mature organizations are now increasingly taking a proactive approach to tracking fraud and investing in future prevention. The strategy is already paying dividends, as it has strengthened defenses and reduced customer churn by 29% over the past year for those using mostly or fully automated systems.
Among other things, it ought to be acknowledged that LexisNexis® Risk Solutions commissioned KS&R to conduct a survey of 507 risk and fraud executives in Financial Services and Lending organizations in the US (423) and Canada (84) during April and May of 2025.