As criminals industrialize their operations and leverage emerging technologies, fraud has become faster, more coordinated and more digital than ever before. The 2026 Global Financial Crime Report estimated the impact of fraud at $579.4 billion globally last year, representing an immense financial crime challenge to which no region or institution is immune. For Canadians, the effects are increasingly tangible — and financial institutions are on the front line.
$3.4 Billion in Authorized & Unauthorized Fraud
According to the report, total fraud losses in Canada reached approximately $3.4 billion in 2025, growing at an 11% annualized rate in 2 years — faster than other G7 countries including France, Germany and Japan, as well as the European Union. This growth has been driven by authorized fraud in particular — including impersonation, investment and employment scams — and reflects a tactical shift by fraudsters toward authorized push payment (APP) fraud. In fact, Canadian authorized and unauthorized fraud losses were nearly at parity in 2025 ($1.4 billion compared to $2.0 billion), while in the United States they were exceeded almost 10 to 1.
Scams Reshape the Canadian Fraud Threat
Scams now represent the fastest growing and most disruptive force reshaping fraud risk for Canadian financial institutions, expanding at a 23% annualized rate over two years — significantly faster than unauthorized bank fraud (11%). While unauthorized fraud still accounts for a larger share of losses today, the speed, scalability and digital reach of scam activity are changing how fraud manifests across the system. In 2025, Canadian authorized fraud losses reached approximately $1.4 billion, underpinned by millions of dollars in employment fraud, advance fee scams, cyber-enabled fraud such as Business Email Compromise (BEC) and more.
This trajectory matters. If current growth trends continue, scams have the potential to surpass unauthorized fraud in the years ahead — marking a clear inflection point for the Canadian financial industry and redefining where prevention efforts must be focused. Rather than strengthen controls at the institutional level, financial institutions will need to prioritize defenses that consider counterparty risk and offer precision detection for scams targeting vulnerable groups.
Elder Fraud: Nearly 40% of Canada’s Fraud Losses
Elder fraud is one of the most consequential dimensions of Canada’s fraud problem. In 2025, losses tied to elder fraud exceeded $1.3 billion, accounting for nearly 40% of all fraud losses nationwide. This concentration of harm underscores how deeply scam activity is impacting one of the country’s most vulnerable populations. While fraud losses continue to grow overall, the outsized share borne by older Canadians highlights a critical reality for financial institutions: scams are not just scaling financially, they are reshaping the human impact of fraud risk in Canada.
What makes elder fraud particularly challenging for financial institutions is how it presents operationally. Victims are often longstanding customers with stable transaction histories, and scam‑driven payments may closely resemble legitimate activity — at least in isolation. As scams continue to scale, financial institutions should consider payments fraud solutions that are segmented to better detect scams targeted against specific groups.
Money Mules: The Infrastructure Powering Canada’s Scam Economy
Behind the rapid growth of scams sits a critical enabler: money mule networks. In 2025, money mules moved an estimated $284 billion in illicit funds globally, acting as the connection between scams, organized crime and downstream money laundering. In Canada alone, mule activity accounted for more than $2.3 billion in illicit fund movement, reflecting how frequently scam proceeds are routed through domestic and cross‑border accounts to obscure their origin and evade recovery efforts. As APP fraud continues to scale, mule networks play an increasingly central role in accelerating losses and impeding recovery — reinforcing the need for detection approaches that extend beyond individual transactions to consider counterparty risk.
Canadian Action with Consortium Analytics
As scams accelerate, institution-level defenses are no longer sufficient. Fraud today operates across networks — spanning accounts, institutions and channels — often staying below the visibility threshold of any single financial institution. This is where consortium analytics become critical. By harnessing network‑level intelligence from thousands of financial institutions and hundreds of millions of counterparties, consortium approaches allow banks to stop payment fraud, mule activity and scams before losses occur. For Canadian financial institutions facing a potential inflection point in fraud risk, consortium analytics offer a shift from isolated detection to collective prevention — enabling earlier intervention, stronger protection for vulnerable customers and a more resilient payments ecosystem overall.
For more on our consortium approach to payments fraud prevention, visit https://verafin.com/solution/wire-fraud/
