Financial criminals will commit a fraud somewhere in the United Kingdom by the time you finish reading this sentence.
More than one million incidents of card scams, online and telephone banking and check frauds occurred in the U.K. in the first six months of the year, according to Financial Fraud Action U.K., an industry body funded by banks.
That's an increase of 53% over the same period of last year, meaning one such crime is now committed every 15 seconds, the FFA said.
Banks are getting more sophisticated in their fight against criminals -- last year, they managed to stop $7 in $10 of the attempted fraud transactions from happening, the body said.
But there is a flip side to their success.
"As the banks' systems get more advanced, fraudsters turn their attention elsewhere and sadly this often means tricking people out of their personal details and money," said Katy Worobec, the director of the group.
Related: 5,300 Wells Fargo employees fired over 2 million phony accounts
The group said 26% of people admitted providing personal details to people claiming to be from their bank, even though they knew they shouldn't.
Why? According to a survey by the FFA, 43% of people simply felt the person asking for their details seemed genuine, while 38% said they provided the details because they were busy and wanted to get off the phone quickly.
The group is launching a new initiative to educate people about financial fraud such as email and phone scams and phishing attempts.
Last year, losses from this kind of fraud in the U.K. totaled 755 million pounds ($980 million).
