Just over one in five (21%) of adults across UK and in 14 other countries around the world were defrauded between 2021 and 2023, according to new research.

The Social Market Foundation think tank surveyed almost 29,000 people around the world to come up with the figure.

The findings have been published to coincide with the Global Fraud Summit 2024, a meeting hosted by the Government, which has brought policymakers and officials from around the world to London to tackle the growing problem.

Ahead of the Lancaster House summit, Interpol’s general secretary Jurgen Stock said cross-border co-operation was needed to ensure there are “no safe havens for financial fraudsters.”

The SMF surveyed people in 15 countries, including Japan, Singapore, Brazil, Germany, USA, Mexico and Australia – to understand experiences of fraud in richer and poorer nations, as well as under very different political and systems and cultures.

The one in five figure suggests there were 228 million individual victims of fraud across the 15 countries over the period. Notably, nearly 40% of victims had suffered from fraud more than once.

Despite the scale of the problem, a majority of people across the 15 countries do not believe their governments’ are prioritising fraud – more than half of (52%) said that their government gave “no” or only “a low” priority to fraud.

Fraud victims were spread fairly evenly across age cohorts – the survey found that 20% of 18-24 year olds fell victim to at least one fraud in the years 2021 to 2023. While 18% of those 65 and over did. People aged 35-44 were the most likely to experience fraud (23%).

The most common type of con victims experienced was push-payment fraud (40%), where the victim has played an inadvertent role in the fraud.

The survey is part of a project sponsored by Santander UK looking at some of the international aspects of the fraud problem and in particular how the nature and extent of fraud, and the public understanding towards it, differs across countries.

Later in the year, the SMF plans to publish a full report, looking in particular at what the lessons about fraud for the UK, from other countries, might be.

Richard Hyde, senior researcher at Social Market Foundation, said: “Fraud is undoubtedly plaguing the UK, but it is not a uniquely British problem. Individuals in major economies across the world are also suffering.

Strikingly, over half the people we surveyed believe that their government did not prioritise fraud very highly. Without robust international comparisons, we cannot hold our politicians and policymakers to account for what they are or are not doing to tackle fraud.”

Chris Ainsley, Santander head of fraud risk management said: “The findings show the staggering scale of fraud globally and underline the importance of working together to protect people from fraudsters.

"The findings also show the significant number of frauds where victims have been tricked or socially engineered into personally handing over their money.”

Representatives from the governments of the Five Eyes intelligence partnership – the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – are among those attending the Global Fraud Summit 2024. Other nations involved include France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Singapore and South Korea.

Tech firms including Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, TikTok and LinkedIn are also at the gathering, along with financial sector organisations including HSBC, NatWest, Santander, Visa and national and international banking associations.

Interpol has warned that fraud is often perpetrated by organised criminal groups, including human traffickers, who force people to work in scam centres which target potential victims across the world.

Home Secretary James Cleverly said: “Fraudsters have no regard for boundaries, they devastate citizens in all our countries. We will only put a stop to this scourge if we fight it head-on together and that’s precisely what we plan to do.”

• SMF surveyed a representative sample of adults across 15 countries (UK, Japan, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Canada, Mexico, USA, Brazil and Argentina). The total number of survey respondents was 28,898 adults. In each of the 15 countries, the sample size in each was 2,000 adults, except New Zealand and Singapore where population limitations meant the sample size was 1,000. The survey took place across late January and early February 2024. For additional assurance, all survey results were weighted by Focal Data to ensure consistency with the population demographics of each respective country surveyed.