Fighting Fraud in financial & professional services: shared risks, distinct realities

A systemic challenge across sectors 

Fighting fraud has become one of the defining challenges facing financial and professional services. Across financial, insurance legal, accountancy and property sectors, organisations handling sensitive data and client money face increasingly sophisticated threats. While the underlying drivers of fraud are often shared, the way risk materialises, and the tools available to manage it, differ significantly. 

At SuperTech, working across these sectors reveals some consistent themes and this article summarises views from our ecosystem members.   

Strong onboarding remains essential, but fraud risk does not begin and end there. How organisations verify clients, establish trust and maintain confidence over time is shaped as much by operating models and transaction structures as by criminal technique. 

Onboarding as a critical first line of defence 

Onboarding remains the primary point at which professional services firms assess identity, legitimacy and risk. In financial services, investment over the past decade has transformed onboarding processes. Identity verification, transaction monitoring and behavioural analytics are now well established, supported by growing, if still imperfect, data-sharing initiatives. Many institutions can identify high-risk activity earlier and intervene more decisively than they once could. 

Legal services has made meaningful progress from a different starting point. Increased regulatory focus on AML and KYC has driven more structured client onboarding and stronger risk awareness. Law firms increasingly recognise their role as gatekeepers, particularly at sensitive points where large sums move quickly and under pressure. Onboarding has become more consistent, but remains closely tied to professional judgment and client relationships. 

The property sector again reflects a different reality. Estate agents, conveyancers, managing agents, lenders and platforms each play a role in onboarding, often across long transaction chains. Identity checks and source of funds analysis are typically shaped by AML obligations and commercial pressure to progress deals, with risk distributed rather than centrally owned. 

Across professional services, onboarding has improved in scope and maturity. It is no longer a box‑ticking exercise, but it is also not a guarantee of safety.  

An evolving and more demanding risk environment 

Despite progress at onboarding, the risk landscape continues to shift. Fraudsters adapt rapidly and operate without governance or ethical constraints. Advances in technology have lowered the barriers to sophisticated attacks, enabling impersonation, document manipulation and social engineering at scale. 

Continued reliance on documents remains a shared vulnerability. Bank statements, identity documents and proofs of address sit at the centre of many onboarding processes, yet they are increasingly easy to falsify. While some parts of financial services are moving towards more contextual and continuous identity assurance, many professional services firms still depend on document review and one‑off assessments. There is also the considerations around financial inclusion and how to make sure everyone has the opportunity to prove their identity to access the services they need.  

Speed compounds these risks. Faster onboarding and real‑time payments in financial services compress the window for effective checks. In legal and property transactions, onboarding may be followed by long periods of inactivity, then intense bursts of time‑critical activity. Fraudsters exploit urgency, handovers and trusted instructions, often well after the initial checks have been completed. 

Human factors remain central. Social engineering and impersonation thrive on trust, workload and familiarity. In many cases, fraud does not occur at onboarding but later in the relationship, when controls become less visible and vigilance drops. At the same time, attacks are becoming more technically sophisticated, with deepfakes, synthetic identities and AI‑generated documents appearing in live cases. 

Similar risks, different operational realities 

Across professional services, common threats include identity fraud, impersonation, document manipulation and insider exploitation. However, sector differences shape how those risks play out. 

Financial services operate at comparative scale, with higher transaction volumes and automated decision‑making than other parts of service economy. This enables advanced analytics and consistent onboarding, but also introduces challenges around false positives and unintended customer harm. Legal services typically manages lower volumes of higher‑value matters. Closer client relationships can provide valuable context at onboarding, but may also introduce blind spots over time. Property transactions often involve multiple intermediaries and fragmented accountability, creating exposure at points of transfer or late‑stage instruction. 

Responsibility for losses also varies. Financial institutions generally absorb fraud losses within risk models. Law firms and property professionals may face direct liability for control failures or diverted funds, significantly increasing exposure for individual professionals and smaller practices. 

These differences matter. Controls designed for high‑volume onboarding environments do not always translate cleanly into relationship‑driven or intermediated settings. 

Extending protection beyond onboarding 

There is growing recognition that stronger onboarding, while necessary, is no longer sufficient on its own. Many of the most damaging frauds occur after trust has been established. Binary allow‑or‑block decisions made at entry struggle to reflect the complexity of long‑running professional relationships. 

More contextual, intelligence‑led approaches are needed for the course of the customer relationship. These include maintaining confidence in identity over time, using behavioural and situational signals, and responding proportionately as risk evolves. 

Data remains a structural challenge. Fraud intelligence is fragmented and often lacks context. Distinguishing victims from perpetrators and sharing richer insight within legal and ethical frameworks remains mostly unresolved.  

Technology has an important role to play, particularly in ongoing monitoring and behavioural intelligence. But technology alone is not sufficient. Progress depends on grounding innovation in operational reality, data quality and shared understanding of how fraud actually occurs. 

A shared responsibility 

Fraud does not respect sector boundaries. Techniques move quickly between financial services, legal services, property and beyond. Responses that remain siloed will always struggle to keep pace. 

Collaborative, problem‑led approaches that examine how risk shifts across transaction chains and where controls fail are increasingly important. Fraud in professional services is systemic, human and increasingly sophisticated. Protecting trust depends on shared learning and practical innovation grounded in real‑world risk. 

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