The report, titled “Fraud in the Age of Continuous Trust”, is based on TransUnion’s proprietary transaction data and a June 2026 survey of business leaders across the US and international markets. Business leaders across sectors estimated fraud losses equivalent to nearly 7% of annual revenue over the past year, a figure that reflects both direct financial losses and the operational cost of remediation.

Two communication-channel vulnerabilities stand out in the data. Nearly one in five outbound business-to-consumer calls made via US mobile carriers was spoofed in H1 2026, providing fraudsters with a mechanism to impersonate trusted brands and prompt account takeovers or payments. Separately, six in ten business leaders reported their customers were victimised by text spoofing in the past year.

These channels feed directly into authorised fraud, where a victim is manipulated into initiating a transaction or granting account access voluntarily. Scam and authorised fraud was cited as the leading source of losses by 35% of US business leaders and 29% globally, ahead of synthetic identity fraud (18% in both geographies), account takeover (16–17%) and first-party fraud (15–18%).

Brian Killeen, vice president of global identity solutions at TransUnion, said: “Harnessing intelligence across the customer lifecycle and applying context to each interaction is critical to identifying emerging threats and enabling trusted interactions.”

4 billion in exposure tied to synthetic identities as of 30 June 2026, and 67% of business leaders expect synthetic identity fraud to increase over the next two years. Fifty-three per cent described it as the threat they are least prepared to address.

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