Conveyancing fraud cost buyers and sellers £11.7 million in the year to March 2025, according to figures from City of London Police and Action Fraud. 143 cases were reported in total, with residential property transactions accounting for the vast majority, 140 reports and £10.97 million in losses, at an average of £78,393 per case. HM Land Registry's own figures for 2025 add to that picture. 86 potential frauds were stopped last year, with an estimated value of £58 million, alongside four indemnity claims and £398,000 paid out in indemnity for cases that weren't caught in time.

Cifas's Fraudscape 2026 report is worth mentioning too to understand the wider issue. It tracks fraud across the UK economy as a whole; banking, applications, money muling, and more. It recorded the highest number of fraud cases on record and flagged document forgery, including AI-generated fake documents, as an increasingly hard problem to catch by eye. That trend doesn't say anything directly about conveyancing, but it's a reasonable indicator of the environment property transactions are sitting in, since the same forged-document problem showing up across banking and applications has no reason to stop at a solicitor's door.

None of this is new territory for conveyancers. What's worth flagging as the year moves into its final quarter is the timing.

Why Q4 is a higher risk period

The final quarter tends to bring a rush of transactions trying to complete before the holiday period, alongside internal pressure to hit annual targets. Both create conditions that fraudsters are well practised at exploiting. Deals move faster, staff are stretched, and verification steps that would normally get a second look can end up rubber stamped under time pressure.

The Action Fraud data reflects exactly the pattern that’s already known as "Friday afternoon fraud", criminals compromising or spoofing a solicitor's email account, then sending altered bank details to a buyer shortly before completion, timed for the moment when large sums are moving quickly and everyone is under pressure to keep the deal on track.

Document verification matters more when volume is up

Fraudscape's point about the growing sophistication of fake documents is a general fraud trend rather than a conveyancing-specific finding, but it still has direct implications for any firm relying primarily on manual document checks during a busy quarter. The margin for human error narrows exactly when staff are under the most pressure to move quickly, leaving gaps for a fake ID document to potentially pass a rushed visual check.

This is where the case for embedding digital verification into the process, rather than treating it as a step that can be sped up under pressure, becomes clearest. A properly certified IDSP applies the same level of scrutiny to the hundredth check of the quarter as it does to the first, and its automated for you.

Finishing the year without burnout

None of this means slowing transactions down; it could even be argued digital ID verification can speed up the process without compromising on accuracy. It also means making sure the checks that matter most don't become the checks that get shortened when the calendar is working against you.

A few practical points worth reviewing in advance before year end, particularly if you’re still running manual checks:

  • Review your processes now before the end of year rush, ensuring they meet the expected standards
  • Flag any late changes to bank account details in a chain as a standard trigger for re-verification, regardless of how close to completion the transaction is
  • Make sure staff covering for annual leave over the holiday period are briefed on the firm's verification process, not just handed the file
  • Treat a spike in transaction volume as a reason to be more cautious, and lean more on automated verification, if possible, not less

Fraud doesn't take a break for the holidays, and conveyancing fraud in particular is timed to exploit exactly the kind of pressure firms are under in the final quarter. Ending the year strong means finishing it with the same due diligence standards it started with.

For more on how Credas supports firms through high volume periods without compromising on verification standards, visit Credas.