Santander launches ‘The Santander Quarterly Scamtracker’

Santander UK is today launching ‘The Santander Quarterly Scamtracker’, which shows that a total of £18,404,965 was stolen from its customers in the first three months of 2025. While this marks a 13% decrease in the amount taken by scammers during the previous quarter (Q4 2024), the bank has highlighted a series of new worrying trends emerging.  

Impersonation scams, advance fee scams and romance/friendship scams were called out as the top rising scams during Q1 2025, collectively accounting for nearly £3.5 million stolen from customers. The increase comes despite research from Santander showing that more than half of consumers say they are aware of romance/friendship scams (63%) and impersonation scams (49%). Worryingly, despite being the second biggest increasing scam type, the research also showed that less than one in five people reported being aware of advance fee scams (17%).

Chris Ainsley, Head of Fraud Risk Management at Santander UK said:  

“While a decrease in the amount stolen by scammers is welcome, £18 million is a staggering amount to have been taken from our customers and placed into the criminal underworld. Scams are evolving at breakneck speed, which can make staying on top of the new ones exceptionally hard for customers. Just this week we’ve seen the emergence of fake sportswear ads on Facebook leading to 450 customers being scammed out of their hard-earned money. Providing customers with the information they need to protect themselves from these criminals is vital if we don’t want to see that £18 million increase in the next Scamtracker stats.” 

Any thoughts and tips for how people can protect themselves against these scams, and what they need to be wary of, send them across ASAP as this story is BREAKING.