The latest UK Finance figures show that nearly 40% of APP losses were due to impersonation scams involving fraudsters posing as the police or banks, to persuade people to transfer funds.

In addition, the level of CEO fraud more than doubled to £12.7m, up 165% on the previous year.

CEO fraud, also known as business email compromise (BEC), is a type of fraud that is enabled via social engineering. Social engineering is the manipulation of situations and people that results in the targeted individuals divulging confidential information. Fraudsters pretend to be a senior manager – often the CEO – in order to persuade a staff member to make a payment.

To commit the fraud, the criminal will either access the company’s email system or use spoofing software to email a member of the finance team with what appears to be a genuine email from the CEO. The message commonly requests a change to payment details or for a payment to be made urgently to a new account.