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Two pension savers lose more than £400,000 to scams in 2025, FOI reveals

A FOI request submitted by Identomat to the City of London Police found 242 pension savers reported scams during the year.

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Two pension savers in England and Wales lost more than £400,000 each to pension scams in 2025/26, data obtained by Identomat found.

A Freedom of Information (FOI) request submitted by the financial services compliance screener to the City of London Police found 242 pension savers reported scams during the year.

Average losses stood at £31,835, while 19 savers reported losing more than £100,000 each.

Among the 10 largest reported cases, the average loss was £334,097, with two victims reporting losses of between £400,000 and £500,000.

Total pension fraud reported to the City of London Police during the year amounted to approximately £7.7m.

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Of the 242 cases, 166, equivalent to 69%, involved pensioners in drawdown, while 76, or 31%, related to pension liberation scams involving savings still in accumulation.

Zurab Kotaria, CEO at Identomat, said: “These figures illustrate the ruinous losses suffered by those who fall victim to pension scams. Gone are the days when a few security questions were sufficient to beat the scammer.

“Supercharging digital defences is critical if pension providers want to guard against pension members having their life savings wiped out by scammers.”

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Pension liberation scams involve fraudsters targeting savers with pensions still in accumulation and offering access to their money before the normal minimum pension age, typically in return for a fee.

Kotaria said: “Pension providers and banks need to rethink their approach and start verifying the person, not their password, because often the answers to those security questions are exactly what a fraudster has already collected during the impersonation process.

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“Accelerating the use of biometric liveness scans – which examine facial expressions – can catch scammers cold when they try to divert funds.”

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He added: “Pension liberation frauds often target a victim’s entire pot, meaning they typically involve larger single transfers than those which target the income of retirees already in drawdown.

“Usually, there are two components to the pension liberation victims’ losses: the money taken by the scammer, plus the tax charge imposed by HMRC.

“Verifying the legitimacy of the receiving scheme and the credentials of the people behind it is a crucial safeguard in combatting pension liberation scams.”

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