The same technology that financial institutions deploying is being weaponised against them. That is the core tension running through Experian’s 2026 Future of Fraud Forecast , and it’s a tension the company is in a position to name because it sits on both sides of it.

According to FTC data cited in the forecast, consumers lost more than US$12.5 billion to fraud in 2024. As per Experian’s own data accompanying the report, nearly 60% of companies reported an increase in fraud losses from 2024 to 2025. Experian’s fraud prevention solutions helped clients avoid an estimated US$19 billion in fraud losses globally in 2025, a figure that underscores the scale of the problem and how much defence now depends on AI matching the speed and autonomy of attacks.

The agentic AI issue

The most pressing finding in Experian’s forecast is what the company calls machine-to-machine mayhem, the point at which agentic AI systems, designed to transact autonomously on behalf of users, become indistinguishable from the bots…