World banking leaders see AI agents as industry’s greatest vulnerability in next year

Survey of 1,440 in 25 countries shows fraud losses increasing all around the world

NEW YORK (June 10, 2026) — Financial institutions around the world appear very concerned about the present and future of AI-driven fraud. In a new survey of 1,440 fraud-management, anti-money laundering (AML), and risk and compliance leaders at banks in 25 countries on five continents, 84% of respondents recognize AI agents as the industry’s greatest exploitable vulnerability in the next year, 88% say AI has already increased the sophistication of fraud, 60% expect AI-mediated banking to reduce the effectiveness of traditional fraud defenses, and 72% believe it will be very difficult to distinguish between legitimate AI-assisted actions and malicious or manipulated AI activity in a future where AI agents commonly initiate transactions.

“AI is starting to reshape how customers interact with e-commerce sites and financial institutions and will change how criminals execute fraud and other financial crimes,” BioCatch CEO Gadi Mazor said. “As digital interactions continue to grow faster, more automated, and increasingly driven by agents, we must move beyond static identity checks and toward a deeper and immediate understanding of behavior, intent, and trust.”

Commissioned by BioCatch, which prevents fraud and financial crime by recognizing patterns in human behavior, this survey also shows the rampant growth of fraud all around the world. In the 2025 version of this report, 71% of respondents reported increasing fraud attempts at their organization. In 2026, that rose to 81%. Even more significantly, the number of respondents reporting increasing year-over-year fraud losses at their bank grew from 59% to 76%. Nearly half of those surveyed this year say their organization loses more than $10 million a year to fraud, 20% more than $25 million, and 5% more than $50 million.

World banking leaders surveyed — all manager-level or above, 79% director-level or above, 23% in their bank’s c-suite — also indicate significant appetite for collaboration. A majority of respondents (86%) say gaining real-time intelligence sharing on the receiving account in an interbank transaction would improve their bank’s ability to stop scams, while 85% say interbank intel-sharing would help it stop fraud and financial crime.

Other key findings:

• Agentic AI attacks are already here: Four-fifths (80%) of respondents say their institution has already encountered attacks utilizing agentic AI.
• Customer trust is a priority: More than 96% of respondents say their institution already measures customer attrition specific to fraud and scam experiences, while 39% say it’s a primary driver of investment decisions.
• Blanket friction is a problem: More than two-thirds (68%) of banking leaders believe their organization’s approach to fraud and financial crime prevention and reimbursement has resulted in net loss of customers. While more than half (56%) attribute this loss of customers to unreimbursed losses, the remaining 44% blame any customer attrition at their institution on too much friction.
• Fraud is accelerating: More than three-fourths (76%) of those surveyed say they’re very concerned about the increase in speed of fraudulent activities in their region.

View the complete interactive report or download a static .pdf to see the complete results.

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About BioCatch:

BioCatch prevents fraud and financial crime by recognizing patterns in human behavior, continuously collecting more than 3,000 anonymized data points — keystroke and mouse activity, touch screen behavior, AI agent usage, jailbroken devices, and more — as people interact with their digital banking platforms. With these inputs, BioCatch's AI and machine-learning models continuously assess both user intent and any signs of coercion or manipulation throughout every millisecond of every digital banking session, allowing banks to distinguish the criminal from the legitimate in real time. Insights drawn from across the entire network of BioCatch institutions further amplify the power and accuracy of that real-time risk-scoring. As of the end of Q1 2026, more than 30 of the world's largest 100 banks and 357 total financial institutions deploy BioCatch solutions, analyzing 18 billion user sessions per month and protecting more than 680 million accounts accessed from more than 1.7 billion devices around the world from fraud and financial crime.

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PR contact:

Mac King
BioCatch director of global marketing communications
Mac.King@BioCatch.com