Inside the fight against financial crime: a conversation with Cifas CEO Mike Haley

In this interview, The Paypers sits down with Mike Haley, CEO of Cifas, the UK’s leading fraud prevention service, to uncover the impact of fraud on the financial sector.

We discuss emerging global fraud threats, how cross-sector and cross-border collaboration can strengthen defences, the latest findings from Cifas’ Fraudscape report, and why technology, AI, and data sharing are reshaping the future of fraud prevention.

Cifas is a UK-based not-for-profit fraud prevention service with nearly 800 members, including all major retail banks, e-retailers, insurers, telecoms, and a growing number of fintech and payments companies. By facilitating data sharing between members, Cifas helped prevent over GBP 2.1 billion in fraud losses in 2024 alone, proving the power of collaborative intelligence.

Mike Haley, CEO of Cifas, shared his professional journey and explained why prevention is more important than simply investigating fraud. His vision is built on three pillars:

• bringing public and private sectors together,
• enabling intelligence and data sharing,
• and focusing on large-scale prevention rather than repeat investigations.

Cifas also helped organising the Global Anti-Scam Summit London 2025, highlighting fraud as an international issue. Organised crime gangs now operate with an ‘international division of labour’ - with romance scams linked to West Africa, technical frauds to Eastern Europe, and purchase scams to Southeast Asia. Rapid technological change, particularly AI, is supercharging the scale and sophistication of these threats.

Every six months, Cifas publishes its Fraudscape report. The latest findings reveal over 217,000 fraud cases, with a case added to its database every two minutes. Key insights:

• Identity fraud remains the largest category (118,000 cases, ~50% of the total), though its share is slowly declining.
• First-party fraud (consumers lying for financial gain) is rising due to economic pressures.
• Facility misuse (e.g., money mulling, account abuse) now makes up a quarter of cases, up 35% year-on-year.
• A disturbing trend: some individuals are selling their own identities to criminals, making detection far harder.

Tools like device reputation, behavioural analysis, biometrics, and multi-factor authentication are widely used, but social engineering remains the weak link, as people can still be tricked into handing over credentials through phishing or persuasion.

On regulation, Haley stressed that while rules are important, they sometimes lag behind technology and can even be counterproductive. Instead, he advocates for practical mechanisms to share fraud data securely across borders, ensuring laws are matched by real-world action.

Key takeaways from the interview:

1. Fraud is global - collaboration and cross-border data sharing are essential.
2. The UK’s mature data-sharing models, like Cifas, are open to fintechs and payments firms.
3. Regulation must be matched with mechanisms that enable secure intelligence sharing.
4. Fraud prevention requires the right mix of tools, processes, and professional expertise to balance security with customer experience.

 

About the author

Since being appointed Chief Executive at Cifas in May 2018, Mike has actively worked to grow the community of stakeholders sharing data, intelligence, and insight in the pursuit of preventing fraud and financial crime. Mike is passionate about Cifas becoming the driving force behind fraud prevention in the UK, and with over 30 years’ experience of tackling and preventing fraud across the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors, he is determined to bring together a strong cross-sectoral collaborative approach to tackling fraud. With a master’s degree in Criminology, Mike has led investigative teams in the National Health Service, Ministry of Defence, Office of Fair Trading, HM Revenue and Customs, and Solicitors Regulation Authority. He has also worked at the National Fraud Authority, directing cross-sector fraud prevention strategies. Mike believes that the battle against fraud is one that cannot be won alone, and by collaborating as a community, we can be relentless in our effort to put the spotlight on fraud and not only protect each other but also make the UK a safer place to live and do business.