A banking trade body has said that scams are focusing on energy bill deals and council tax rebates to trick people into handing over their money.
In 2021, fraud where people were duped out of money and personal details went up 39% compared to 2020.
In 2021, 1.3 billion dollars, the most on record, was stolen through fraud, an increase of 8% from the year before.
Britain Finance said criminals are exploiting weaknesses outside of the banking system, often through online and social media platforms.
Fake delivery texts that asked for payment or NHS Covid 19 pass scams during the height of the epidemic have now been replaced by schemes focusing on cost-of-living challenges.
Using phone calls, fake websites, and social media posts, criminals impersonated a range of organisations such as the NHS, banks and government departments.
While people of all age groups were falling victim to such scams, UK Finance said that it was the younger age groups that were the prime target. Authorised push payment fraud losses outstripped fraud losses on bank and credit card losses for the first time in the first half of 2021. Investment fraud cases went up by 57% and impersonation scams rose by 36% on the year before.
Less than half of the losses were returned to victims of authorised push payment fraud.
There has been a hike in investment scams where celebrities are supposedly endorsing them on social media, according to Katy Worobec, the managing director of economic crime at UK Finance.
The Dedicated Card and Payment Card Unit, a specialist police unit that targets the organised criminal gangs behind fraud, prevented 101 m of fraud in 2021 - the largest amount in the unit's 20 year history, UK Finance said.