The scale of mortgage fraud in the UK may be far greater than official enforcement figures suggest, Thirdfort warns, with only 17 enforcement investigations into mortgage fraud since 2018.

A Freedom of Information request made by Thirdfort to the Financial Conduct authority suggests that UK mortgage fraud could be greater than official enforcement figures show.

The number of investigations peaked in 2019 with five cases, while activity continued across 2022 to 2024 with an average of three to four cases annually.

Figures from Apex Bridging found that there was a 32.8% spike in mortgage fraud cases between 2022 and 2023.

The data also shows two dormant years between 2020 and 2021, which it suggests could be linked to pandemic-related disruption in financial crime detection and enforcement.

UK Finance revealed that there were losses of £1.17bn to fraud in 2023, with mortgage fraud a growing contributor.

With the rise of technology, Cifas found that the use of artificial intelligence (AI) generated fake documents and identity fraud is also making detection harder.

Thirdfort co-founder and chief executive officer Olly Thornton-Berry says: “These figures suggest that the number of mortgage fraud investigations is relatively low, but of course that’s not the full picture.”

“In the UK, in addition to the FCA, the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), local police forces, and the National Crime Agency (NCA) all play a role in investigating cases involving suspected mortgage fraud.”

“Moreover, with fraudsters becoming more sophisticated, and industry data telling a different story, it’s likely that there’s a significant amount of fraudulent activity going undetected.”

Earlier this year, National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) data released by the Home Office revealed that people aged between 18 and 39 account for almost three quarters of cases of rental fraud.

NFIB data shows that fraud losses amounted to nearly £9m across around 5,000 reported cases last year.