UK Effort Aims to Expose Duplicate Financing Fraud by Year-End 2023

A collaborative initiative underway among the International Chamber of Commerce United Kingdom (ICC-UK), the Centre for Digital Trade and Innovation (C4DTI), and fintech solutions provider MonetaGo pledges that by the close of 2023, UK banks will not be duped by duplicate financing tactics.

Duplicate financing is a type of fraud by which perpetrators are able to get a given transaction financed more than once by having multiple banks finance the exact same deal without banks having the ability to cross-check. “Regulation around confidentiality hinders banks from sharing information on deals they have financed with other banks, creating a grey area that fraudsters leverage to finance the same transaction multiple times. It is a fraud typology impossible to detect via existing siloed AI and KYC tools and requires an innovative and collaborative ecosystem approach. Duplicate financing has therefore syphoned billions of dollars from the financial services community globally”, said ICC-UK in a press release issued 6 February 2023.

Although some details are undisclosed, the majority of trade banks in the UK have agreed to take part in the project which would make the UK the first G7 economy to confront the problem of duplicate financing in a comprehensive way directed at saving significant amounts funding from loss to fraud that can be better spent facilitating real trade transactions.

“Not all innovations require years to deliver value, and eliminating duplicate financing fraud, in partnership with MonetaGo, is a great example of an existing solution that will have a significant impact in the short term”, said ICC-UK Secretary General Chris Southworth. “ICC United Kingdom is uniquely positioned to help accelerate the elimination of duplicate financing fraud, with the aim that every financed Pound makes its way to a business raising finance legitimately by the end of 2023.”