Jason Wassell, Chief Executive of the CCTA, opened the event by welcoming all our delegates. He explained the aim of the session was to focus on different areas to the norm. This was an opportunity to explore operational themes lenders should always have a focus on.

Our first speaker was Stephen Dalton, Director of Intelligence of Cifas. He was able to share some findings from this year’s Fraudscape report. He talked through the various forms fraud can take and some of the insights and trends within the report. It was eye-opening to hear that 80% of fraud is now cyber enabled.

He finished by talking about managing the risk of fraud and ways in which we can work together to tackle the issue.

Next, Clare Hughes, Partner, Addleshaw Goddard spoke about anti-money laundering. She provided an overview of the regulatory framework for anti-money laundering and the obligations on firms. Following this she spoke about enforcement when things do go wrong.

This underlined the importance of getting it right, so Clare was able to share some pointers for firms in terms of assessing risk and ongoing monitoring. She closed by sign positing to some useful external resources.

Our last session before lunch was a panel session covering all the issues on the agenda. Panellists were drawn from CCTA membership, with Scott Woolveridge, Operations Director, GAIN Credit and Jamie Place, Chief Information Officer, Evlo, providing the lending viewpoint. We were also joined by Stephen Adams, Principal Fraud and ID Risk Consultant, Equifax. Stephen was able to share views from the perspective of the credit reference agency.

There was much discussion of how financial businesses can work together to address these issues. AI was covered, with there being a recognition that it could be ‘friend or foe’. It was agreed that it can be a helpful tool, but criminals are constantly using it for their own gain.

After lunch, Jason Wassell spoke about cyber security. In a world of rapidly changing technology, the value and security of data, particularly customer data, is becoming increasingly important. Jason covered governance and culture, explaining what ‘good’ would look like. He shared some practical steps firms can take and how to work on incident response. This included protecting your firm from possible breeches and attacks, as well as steps that can be put in place to increase security.

Our final speaker was Anna Fraser from the Illegal Money Lending Team. Even the most conservative estimates now suggest over one million people are using loan sharks in the UK, so it is vitally important that we work together on access to credit, but also how best to stop and convict loan sharks.

Anna talked about the changing nature of this crime and the new ways criminals are exploiting their targets. She also shared some insights into the victims and the circumstances that led to them borrowing from an illegal lender. We continued to work on this topic as ‘Stop Loan Sharks week’ approached in May.

Jason closed by thanking those who attended and underlined the importance of firms considering their operational resilience.