CIFAS celebrates 20 years of fraud prevention

CIFAS - The UK's Fraud Prevention Service - has been preventing fraud for 20 years. Established in November 1988, CIFAS was formed by five retail credit providers. Fiercely competitive in every other sphere of business, these organisations took a step that changed the fraud prevention landscape in the United Kingdom. They decided to treat fraud prevention as non-competitive, realising that the only effective way to combat fraud would be to work together and share information. With support from the UK's first Data Protection Registrar and the Office of Fair Trading, they founded CIFAS.

CIFAS Members share information on identified frauds in the fight to prevent further fraud.

20 years later, 270 organisations are CIFAS Members, covering over 90% of the financial marketplace, in addition to those in other areas of activity such as telecommunications, insurance, mail order, factoring and share dealing.

During 2007, CIFAS Members reported that, by using the CIFAS fraud prevention database, they had prevented losses of almost £1 billion, the highest figure ever recorded. And since 1988, Members have, by using CIFAS, prevented fraud losses of more than £5 billion.

Other schemes modelled on CIFAS have been set up in Southern Africa and Germany.