CIFAS

'CIFAS - The UK's fraud prevention service', was founded in 1988 by lenders looking to reduce fraud losses. CIFAS currently has around 270 members from the banking industry including banking, credit cards, asset finance, retail credit, mail order, insurance, savings and investments, telecommunications, factoring, and share dealing.

CIFAS originally was an an acronym of 'Credit Industry Fraud Avoidance System', but this was dropped as CIFAS expanded beyond the credit industry and as the 'system' developed into a members-only data sharing syndicate.

CIFAS members provide information on identified frauds to a central database, and members of the public also can pay to add their details to the database if they consider themselves at risk. The CIFAS database is then used to provide fraud information on consumer credit reports provided by the three main credit reference agencies, Callcredit, Equifax and Experian.

CIFAS is a not for profit organisation, set up to prevent further fraud and financial crime. Since the Serious Crime Act 2007, public authorities are now able to join CIFAS, provided they are able to reciprocally share information with other CIFAS members.

Only two types of CIFAS warnings - known as CIFAS Case Types - are visible to consumers on credit files. These are Protective Registration and Victim of Impersonation.

Protective Registration is commonly used if a consumer has been a victim of identity fraud, or if there is reason to believe that he or she is at risk of becoming a victim. The consumer must purchase this service either directly from CIFAS or indirectly through another provider. CIFAS charges £12 per annum for a Protective Registration warning to be lodged for 12 months. This can be renewed every 12 months on application to CIFAS.

Under the Rules of CIFAS, which regulates how members of CIFAS handle CIFAS data, CIFAS warnings can never be a cause for an application to be declined, but do require the lender to carry out extra verification checks to establish the identity of the applicant.

For this reason CIFAS fraud warnings are not classed as adverse information on credit reports, are not permitted to be included in any automated credit scoring or lending decision processes.

See also Subject Access Request and Hunter.

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