Over the last 12 months, Spanish financial institutions have seen increases in attempted fraud sessions, attempted scam sessions, the average value of those fraud and scam attempts and the number of digital banking sessions conducted from stolen devices. Stolen device fraud allows its perpetrators to profit twice: once by draining the victim’s bank account and a second time by selling the stolen device.
“In the first half of the year, our Spanish customers also reported a 35% increase in sessions involving malware,” said Thomas Peacock, BioCatch Director of Global Fraud Intelligence. “That spike is consistent with the local increases we’ve seen in both job and investment scams, which often direct victims to install a bogus trading app or work portal that then infects the device with a piece of malware.”
Bad actors targeting the region increasingly impersonate legitimate institutions and the family members of their prospective victims, combining AI-generated voice cloning with live photo and video calls to build a convincing sense of legitimacy.
The Spanish banks reporting this data all work with BioCatch, which prevents fraud and scams by recognising patterns in user behaviour. Attempted fraud sessions at those banks increased by 19% over the last 12 months, attempted scam sessions by 46%, and the average value of a fraud attempt by 63%.
Other key report findings:
- Scams most common fraud type: Social engineering scams accounted for 43% of all fraud and 60% of fraud losses in Spain over the last 12 months.
- Bot sessions decline: As Spanish banks have improved their defences against bots, fraudsters continue to pivot to social engineering attacks.
