More than 100 of the society’s branches and agencies will be hosting the ‘Take Five over Tea’ session on w/c 24 February, which are open to members of the public and customers.

Building societies, banks and other financial service providers work hard to protect their customers – and in 2018 stopped £2 in every £3 of attempted unauthorised fraud but criminals still managed to steal a total of £1.2 billion.

Sally Hodgson, fraud manager at Yorkshire Building Society, said: “Fraud scams can happen to anybody but older people are often targeted when it comes to financial fraud and in fact, financial fraud happens every fifteen seconds across the UK.

“What’s more, two in five people have been personally affected by fraud, or know someone that has.

“By hosting our ‘Take Five over Tea’ session we hope to reach as many people as possible to raise awareness around this issue. We’ll be talking about the common types of fraud and the things you can to do to prevent fraud in an informal setting offering friendly advice and a cup of tea.”

Take Five is a national campaign led by UK Finance, and backed by the Government, that offers straight-forward and impartial advice to help people protect themselves from preventable financial fraud. This includes email deception and phone-based scams as well as online fraud – particularly where criminals impersonate trusted organisations.

Details of event locations and times can be found at www.ybs.co.uk/media-centre/take-five

For more information on protecting yourself from fraud visit www.ybs.co.uk/security or www.takefive-stopfraud.org.uk