UK To Ban All Cold Calls Selling Financial Products

The UK is to ban all cold calls selling financial products as part of a national crackdown on scams.

Unsolicited calls offering any financial product will be covered by the ban, with a view to stopping fraudsters selling sham insurance products or cryptocurrency schemes.

A new fraud squad will also be set up with 500 staff, up from 120 now.

But Labor and the Liberal Democrats called the plans “too little, too late as fraud is now the most common crime in the UK, with one in 15 people falling victim.

Last summer, 41 million people were targeted by suspicious calls and texts, according to media regulator Ofcom. However, most fraud now has an online element, data suggests.

The government said the blanket ban on cold calls selling financial products would cover legitimate calls as well.

This will mean that “anyone who receives a call trying to sell them products such as cryptocurrency schemes or insurance will know it’s a scam”, it said.

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Exactly which financial products will be covered will be decided after consultation, with the ban expected to be brought in this summer.

In addition, the government said so-called “Sim Farms”, where people use a large number of Sim cards to send text messages in bulk, will be banned

Intelligence services and police will work with overseas partners to shut down call centres engaged in fraud.

Advertising campaigns will warn people about the risk of scam calls

There will be new measures to tackle phone number “spoofing”, where scammers alter Caller ID information to make calls look genuine.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that the new rules will tackle “cold-hearted” scammers who “ruin lives in seconds.”

Scams he said fund “organized crime and terror”.