AI Arms Race Is Radically Reshaping the Fraud Threat in EMEA, FICO Research Finds

New research from FICO, a leading global analytics software firm, shows that fraud leaders across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) are grappling with rising fraud complexity and AI-enabled threats, even as they accelerate investment in AI-driven detection and enterprise-wide fraud strategy. The findings, drawn from FICO’s global survey of 202 senior fraud, risk and technology professionals at retail banks, neobanks and fintechs, show that 52% of EMEA institutions now cite increasing fraud complexity as their leading fraud prevention challenge, compared with just 40% of global firms. And nearly half ranked effective AI integration as a top challenge, underscoring that embedding AI into existing fraud controls remains as much an operational hurdle as a technological one. “Fraud in EMEA is not accelerating out of control, but it is becoming far more sophisticated, and that shift matters just as much,” said Adam Davies, vice president, Product Management at FICO. “Fraudsters now have access to the same generative and agentic AI tools that banks are deploying to stop them, and they are using them to scale social engineering, synthetic identities and deepfake-enabled attacks. The institutions pulling ahead are the ones connecting their fraud functions across the enterprise and orchestrating every intelligence source they have, rather than adding point solutions one at a time.” Other highlights from the FICO research for EMEA: EMEA respondents rate AI-enhanced fraud (4.42 out of 5) and social engineering scams (4.36) as more significant threats than the global average (3.86 and 3.90 respectively), with synthetic identities (4.02) and deepfake fraud (3.96) also outpacing global concern levels 86% of EMEA institutions see a unified, enterprise-wide fraud strategy as essential, with 38% already treating it as a critical priority and 48% pursuing it as a longer-term focus Half (51%) of EMEA institutions report false positive rates above 15%, creating friction for legitimate customers even as fraud controls tighten Third-party vendor models now carry the greatest influence over EMEA fraud decisions (46%), far more than in-house models (24%), reflecting growing reliance on external expertise to keep pace with evolving threats “The next 24 months will be defined by orchestration, not by any single piece of technology,” Davies added. “EMEA institutions have already built strong foundations in AI-driven detection, and confidence in agentic AI is particularly high in the region. What’s needed now is the connective tissue: bringing in-house models, vendor intelligence and consortium data together so fraud teams can act on a complete picture in real time, without pushing more friction onto legitimate customers.” Davies points out four priorities for financial institutions in their fight against fraud: Close the deployment gap by moving AI from pilot to production at enterprise scale. “You should prioritize what works within disciplined fraud control frameworks rather than launching yet more pilots,” he noted. Invest in active orchestration across models, channels, products, and portfolios so that shared signals shape fraud management decisions in real time. Apply risk-based, outcome-driven prioritization to balance competing investment demands, led by financial impact and regulatory exposure. Treat fraud prevention and customer experience as a single, connected challenge. “The organizations that can do both will be the ones that define competitive advantage in this era,” Davies said. FICO® Enterprise Fraud Solution, powered by FICO® Platform , addresses the full spectrum of fraud, from synthetic identity and application fraud to real-time payment scams and account takeover. Its composable, API-first architecture integrates with existing systems without requiring a rip-and-replace, while AI and ML models trained on billions of tagged transactions from a consortium of more than 10,000 financial institutions help drive detection accuracy while reducing false positives. Generative and agentic AI capabilities further accelerate investigation and decision-making, and digital simulation tools allow fraud teams to test and tune strategies before deployment. NoYes Artificial Intelligence 05 Oct, 2026