The UK Home Office has published its Fraud Strategy 2026 to 2029, committing more than £250 million – roughly $335 million USD – over the next three years to reduce fraud against individuals and businesses. The strategy frames fraud as the United Kingdom’s largest crime type, responsible for losses exceeding £14.4 billion annually and affecting one in 14 adults and one in four businesses.
The plan is structured around three pillars: Disrupt, Safeguard, and Respond. The centrepiece of the Disrupt pillar is a new Online Crime Centre, scheduled to begin operations in April. The centre will bring together specialists from government, police, intelligence agencies, banks, mobile networks, and technology companies, operating from a shared intelligence picture of global fraud networks. More than £30 million is earmarked for the centre, which will identify and shut down the accounts, websites, and phone numbers that criminal groups rely on – blocking scam texts, freezing criminal accounts, and removing fraudulent social media content at scale.
For the identity verification industry, the strategy’s Business Digital Identity pillar is the most consequential development. The government commits to making identity verification mandatory for all company directors at Companies House by the end of 2026. The deadline consolidates a rollout already underway: Companies House adopted GOV.UK One Login for digital identity verification in April 2025, requiring new directors to verify at the point of filing and existing directors to complete verification within a transition window. Mandatory identity checks for company directors and persons with significant control began phasing in from November 2025. The Fraud Strategy frames this deadline explicitly as an anti-fraud measure, designed to close off opportunities for individuals to hide behind false or unverified corporate identities.
The strategy also targets gaps in telecoms-facilitated fraud. The government and Ofcom will run a full consultation later in 2026 to consider extending the regulatory framework governing phone-number and SIM-based fraud, potentially applying obligations beyond the largest operators.
Fraud Minister Lord Hanson characterised the strategy as a response to the industrialization of fraud: “Fraudsters are exploiting new technology, industrialising their operations and targeting the British public at scale.” The UK Home Affairs Committee has been examining digital identity benefits and risks in parallel, and the fraud strategy’s IDV mandate gives that inquiry a concrete policy context to assess.
Sources: GOV.UK, GOV.UK Fraud Strategy launch
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
