London Police selects Capita and PwC for Action Fraud upgrade work

City of London Police has selected Capita and PwC to support with upgrading the services of its fraud reporting division.

Launched in 2005, City of London Police’s Action Fraud service is the UK's national fraud reporting system. The place to go for information and advice about fraud, as well as to report fraud, the service is also used by British citizens to report fraud online (such as forwarding scam emails for inspection) or by telephone.

As incidents of fraud and cybercrime become more common and more sophisticated, however, City of London Police is continuously working to upgrade its services. In separate projects, consultants from Capita and PwC have been tapped to support improvement work.

Capita has won a £50 million contract which will see the firm deliver an end-to-end customer management process for potential victims of fraud from the moment they contact the service. Currently, Action Fraud currently receives more than the 350,000 calls and 2.3 million unique website visits each year – but that number is expected to rise further in the coming years.

Capita will deploy its successful customer experience model for identifying, managing and monitoring customers using data and specialist coaching to support potential victims of crime, delivering digital transformation to improve access to different reporting channels.

Jon Lewis, Capita’s Chief Executive Officer, commented, “We are incredibly proud to be chosen to deliver the new fraud reporting service for City of London Police, and are focused on providing an empathetic and seamless service for all potential victims of fraud.”

“This contract is testament to our proven track record of delivering digitally enabled customer management for citizens – including some of the most vulnerable people in society – and reflects our commitment to delivering an outstanding service to our public sector clients.”

The contract with Capita runs until 2029, and has the option to be extended by a further two years. 

Over the same period, PwC will provide the technology services for the crime and intelligence management that underpins the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB), which receives reports from Action Fraud.

The Big Four firm will also support the City of London Police integrate and manage the services.

Scott Logan, a partner at PwC, said, “The recently published National Fraud Strategy was an important step forward in the UK’s fight against cybercrime and fraud. We’re privileged to be delivering the technology solution which will help underpin that fight.”

“We look forward to working alongside City of London Police and our technology alliance partner (Palantir) bringing our experience in delivering technology programmes and expertise in managing risks around cyber and economic crime to help deliver this vital service to citizens and businesses.”

Looking ahead, the new service has received £152 million of funding from the Home Office and City of London Corporation to support the build and run of the service for the next five years. Along with contracting support services, this will be used to train approximately 150 skilled customer-contact experts working for the service – who will be paid above the living wage, and who will be given enhanced victim support and empathy workshops, and will be retained through a bespoke development programme.