Protecting public money with intelligence-led fraud prevention

Grants and loans are central to how government delivers support and innovation funding to energy, housing and regional growth. They are increasingly targeted by organised fraud.

Emergency schemes such as Bounce Back Loans prioritised speed, with limited upfront checks. Subsequent reviews estimated that up to 10–15% of loans involved fraud or error, with much of that loss now difficult to recover.

Synectics works with lenders and public sector partners to apply shared intelligence and information that separates genuine need from coordinated abuse. This experience informs a resilient model: applying risk‑led screening early in the funding lifecycle, aligned to the same preventive disciplines used daily across commercial lending and insurance.

By assessing risk before payment, public bodies can now protect funds at scale without slowing delivery for legitimate applicants.

Immigration systems operate under sustained operational and security pressure. Decisions must be accurate, consistent and defensible, often in complex environments involving identity risk, document misuse and organised networks.

Synectics delivered the Home Office Immigration Act Portal as a bespoke solution designed around specific legislative and operational requirements. The platform integrates screening, analytics and case workflow to support real‑time decision‑making at scale.

By combining authoritative public sector data with wider fraud intelligence and advanced document analysis, Synectics helps protect from misuse earlier in the process.

For more than 20 years, Synectics has delivered the National Fraud Initiative (NFI) on behalf of the Cabinet Office.

NFI brings data together across central government, local authorities and wider public bodies to identify fraud, error and overpayment that cannot be seen in isolation. It exposes patterns such as identity reuse, address clustering and repeated behaviour across schemes — supporting assurance, investigation and recovery activity at national scale.

Just as importantly, NFI demonstrates what effective data sharing makes possible. It shows that fraud does not sit neatly within organisational boundaries, and that collective visibility is essential if government is to move earlier in the lifecycle and prevent loss before it occurs.