Fraud leaders across Europe, the Middle East and Africa are grappling with rising fraud complexity and AI-enabled threats, even as they accelerate investment in AI-driven detection and enterprise-wide fraud strategy, reports FICO. FICO’s global survey of 202 senior fraud, risk and technology professionals at retail banks, neobanks and fintechs, reveals that 52% of EMEA institutions now cite increasing fraud complexity as their leading fraud prevention challenge, compared with just 40% of global firms.
And nearly half ranked effective AI integration as a top challenge, underscoring that embedding AI into existing fraud controls remains as much an operational hurdle as a technological one.
FICO report key takeaways
- More than one-third (36%) of EMEA institutions report fraud attempts rising by more than 25% over the past 24 months;
- 28% reported that financial losses from fraud grew more than 25% over the past 2 years, and
- Effective AI integration ranks as a top challenge for 48% of EMEA respondents, closely mirroring the global response
“Fraud in EMEA is not accelerating out of control, but it is becoming far more sophisticated, and that shift matters just as much,” said Adam Davies, vice president, Product Management at FICO. “Fraudsters now have access to the same generative and agentic AI tools that banks are deploying to stop them, and they are using them to scale social engineering, synthetic identities and deepfake-enabled attacks. The institutions pulling ahead are the ones connecting their fraud functions across the enterprise and orchestrating every intelligence source they have, rather than adding point solutions one at a time.”
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Other report highlights
- EMEA respondents rate AI-enhanced fraud (4.42 out of 5) and social engineering scams (4.36) as more significant threats than the global average (3.86 and 3.90 respectively), with synthetic identities (4.02) and deepfake fraud (3.96) also outpacing global concern levels
- 86% of EMEA institutions see a unified, enterprise-wide fraud strategy as essential, with 38% already treating it as a critical priority and 48% pursuing it as a longer-term focus
- Half (51%) of EMEA institutions report false positive rates above 15%, creating friction for legitimate customers even as fraud controls tighten
- Third-party vendor models now carry the greatest influence over EMEA fraud decisions (46%), far more than in-house models (24%), reflecting growing reliance on external expertise to keep pace with evolving threats
“The next 24 months will be defined by orchestration, not by any single piece of technology,” Davies added. “EMEA institutions have already built strong foundations in AI-driven detection, and confidence in agentic AI is particularly high in the region. What’s needed now is the connective tissue: bringing in-house models, vendor intelligence and consortium data together so fraud teams can act on a complete picture in real time, without pushing more friction onto legitimate customers.”
Davies’ four priorities for financial institutions in their fight against fraud:
- Close the deployment gap by moving AI from pilot to production at enterprise scale. “You should prioritise what works within disciplined fraud control frameworks rather than launching yet more pilots.”
- Invest in active orchestration across models, channels, products, and portfolios so that shared signals shape fraud management decisions in real time.
- Apply risk-based, outcome-driven prioritisation to balance competing investment demands, led by financial impact and regulatory exposure.
- Treat fraud prevention and customer experience as a single, connected challenge. “The organisations that can do both will be the ones that define competitive advantage in this era.”
