The hidden fraud in asset finance and how to fight it

2025 was a record year for fraud in the UK, but asset finance’s own numbers read like good news inside that record.

Cifas, the UK’s fraud prevention community, recorded a 6% increase of cases filed to its National Fraud Database between 2025 and 2024. However, identity fraud, still the single biggest category, fell 3% nationally.

In asset finance specifically, it fell much further: down 21%, from 1,558 cases to 1,236.

Read only that headline and the conclusion writes itself: the sector is getting safer. It isn’t quite that simple. Fraud in asset finance did not shrink in 2025. It moved.

[National Fraud Database, total filings vs. identity fraud filings, 2024 vs. 2025]

What the numbers actually show

Cifas breaks the National Fraud Database down by sector, and the fuller 2024-to-2025 picture for asset finance is more mixed than the identity fraud headline suggests.

Category	2024	2025	Change
Identity fraud	1,558	1,236	-21%
False application	2,029	1,543	-24%
Misuse of facility	1,594	1,691	+6%

Two of the three categories are down. The one that isn’t matters more than it looks.

Misuse of facility, the category covering payment evasion and abuse of an account after it has already been opened, rose 6% in asset finance. That’s a modest number in isolation, but it sits inside a much larger national pattern: misuse of facility rose 43% across all sectors in 2025, and Cifas is explicit that a large part of that increase is loan, asset and credit card applications taken out with no intention of ever repaying.

There’s also a scale point that puts the false application figures in context.

Asset finance’s 1,543 false applications represented 9% of every false application filed to the National Fraud Database in 2025, unchanged from 9% in 2024.

Because that share held flat, it implies a national total of roughly 17,000 false applications in 2025, down from around 22,500 in 2024, a national decline that closely tracks the sector’s own 24% drop. In other words, asset finance isn’t outperforming or lagging the wider trend on false applications; it’s moving in lockstep with it, while still carrying a share of the national total comparable to markets many times its size, such as personal loans and mortgages.

Put together: this is not a sector where fraud is disappearing. It’s a sector where the type of fraud is shifting, from fraud committed to get through the door, toward fraud committed after the door has already opened.

Why asset and motor finance remain a structural target

Some of this is simply structural. Asset and motor finance products are built for speed: remote onboarding, fast decisioning, far less friction than a typical mortgage application. The assets themselves, vehicles and equipment, hold real resale value, which makes them useful to criminals looking to launder money or extract cash quickly.

The industry treats this as a live issue, not a theoretical one.

The Finance & Leasing Association, the trade body for the UK’s asset and motor finance sectors, now runs dedicated training for its members titled “Understanding Fraud in Asset Finance,” covering KYC, title verification and independent asset valuation. Similarly, the FLA Fraud and Financial Crime Summit, scheduled end of September 2026, underscores the urgency of addressing fraud risks head-on, bringing together industry leaders to share insights and best practices. A trade body doesn’t build that course unless its members are asking for it.

Consumers in this market are being targeted directly, right now. In August 2025, the Financial Conduct Authority warned that fraudsters were impersonating car finance lenders, contacting people and requesting personal and banking details under the false pretence that they were owed compensation linked to the motor finance redress scheme. The warning was last updated in December 2025, a reminder that this is an active threat, not a hypothetical one.

The aggravating factor: artificial intelligence

Synthetic identities are becoming industrialised, with criminals building convincing long-term profiles that blur the line between real customers and AI-generated imposters.

38% rise in unauthorised SIM swaps nationally, driven by more automated methods of compromising accounts, and to deepfake audio increasingly used to target call centres, a technique directly relevant to any lender or lessor that still verifies customers by phone.

None of this is unique to asset finance. But it compounds the sector-specific pressures already described. A criminal building a synthetic identity over several months doesn’t particularly care whether the eventual target is a bank account, a mobile contract or a vehicle finance agreement. What matters to them is which door has the weakest lock.

What good practice looks like

None of this means lenders and lessors are powerless. As Antoine Flotard, who leads Meelo’s UK sales, puts it: “When I speak with UK asset finance risk managers, I see they have started to automate and digitise their environment, but there is still a lot of work to do, including on fighting fraud.”

“Everything looks good on paper, until you cross-check the data.”

A few principles consistently separate organisations that catch fraud early from those that only find out after the loss:

Cross-check the data. A fabricated payslip or a doctored ID document can clear a single manual check without issue. It only breaks down when it’s checked against payroll records, credit bureau data or biometric verification, rather than relying on one document at the point of application.

Watch the whole lifecycle, not just onboarding. Misuse of facility, not identity fraud at application, is now the fastest-growing risk both nationally and within asset finance specifically. An account can be opened with entirely genuine-looking information, and only prove fraudulent months later when the underlying identity turns out to have been built from data compromised elsewhere.

Favour decisions that can be explained and audited. This matters as much for regulatory scrutiny as for catching fraud itself.

Calibrate friction proportionately. Tightening controls shouldn’t come at the cost of penalising the overwhelming majority of legitimate customers.

This is something we see directly at Meelo, through the cases handled by our lending and leasing clients in the UK and Europe. The fraud that gets through is rarely built from fiction; it’s built from real personal data taken from an earlier breach and assembled into a profile that looks, on its face, entirely ordinary.

Conclusion

A good year on paper does not mean a lower risk in practice. For asset and motor finance, 2025’s fraud data tells a story of displacement rather than decline: identity fraud down, misuse of facility up, and a sector still carrying a share of false applications comparable to markets several times its size.

Add a trade body running dedicated fraud training and a regulator warning consumers about active scams targeting the sector, and the message is consistent.

Fraud in asset finance isn’t going away. It’s changing shape faster than it’s shrinking, and vigilance needs to follow that shift, not the headlines.

Laurent Kocinski is CEO and co-founder of Meelo, an identity verification and fraud prevention platform for banking, credit and leasing companies.