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The initiative is a biennial UK-wide counter-fraud exercise
The National Fraud Initiative (NFI) helps prevent and detect fraud by sharing and matching sets of data electronically.
We lead the NFI exercise in Wales under the Auditor General’s powers in the Public Audit (Wales) Act 2004. The NFI is overseen by the Public Sector Fraud Authority for the UK.
This report refers to each NFI exercise based on the financial year in which it launched – this recent report looks at the NFI 2022-23 exercise.
Fraud and payment errors of £7.1 million have been identified by the latest National Fraud Initiative exercise in Wales. 97% of these are from local authority data matches relating to council tax, housing benefit, blue badges, housing waiting lists, and pensions.
The success of the NFI depends on how well participating organisations assess and review data matches, and then record the outcomes. Some bodies are doing good work on this, but there are inconsistencies in local follow-up arrangements, as well as variations in outcomes between similar participants.
Cumulative outcomes for Wales are now at £56.5 million since the initiative started in 1996. Across the UK, cumulative NFI outcomes are now at £2.9 billion.