LexisNexis: synthetic identity spikes
- LexisNexis Risk Solutions said on April 8 that synthetic identity fraud surged in 2025, becoming a bigger piece of online fraud worldwide. - The standout number is 11% — more than one in ten reported frauds used synthetic identities, up eight-fold year over year. - That matters for insurers because fake identities can enter claims, underwriting, and provider workflows long before any single check flags them.
Synthetic identity fraud sounds niche, but it is really a bookkeeping problem with teeth. A fake person gets built from real scraps — a stolen ID number here, a real address there, maybe a new email, phone, or payment trail layered on top. Then that fake person starts acting like a customer, claimant, applicant, or provider. LexisNexis Risk Solutions says that kind of fraud jumped hard in 2025, and the timing matters because more of the internet is now being navigated by bots and AI agents that can move faster and look more human while they do it. (insurancejournal.com) ### What is a synthetic identity? It is not classic identity theft, where a criminal impersonates one real person. It is a manufactured identity — a bundle of real and fake attributes stitched together into someone who does not actually exist. That is why it can be so slippery. There may be no obvious victim who immediately notices and(insurancejournal.com)ing it. (prnewswire.com) ### What changed in 2025? The scale changed. LexisNexis says synthetic identities showed up in 11% of reported frauds in 2025, an eight-fold increase from 2024, making it the fastest-growing fraud type in its report. The same report, based on more than 116 billion online transactions in 2025, also logged an 8% global rise in fraud rates overall and a 59% increase in bot attacks. (prnewswire.com) ### Where does agentic AI fit in? Not as a neat one-to-one cause, but as an accelerant. LexisNexis separately tracked 450% growth in “agentic” traffic across 2025 — mostly around credit card payments and gaming or gambling logins. (prnewswire.com)etection harder. (prnewswire.com) ### Why is this worse than a fake application? Because the fake identity can sit quietly inside a system and contaminate everything around it. In insurance, that can mean a bad applicant record, a claims file tied to a person who (prnewswire.com)hat is the real headache. (insurancejournal.com) ### Why are insurers paying attention now? Insurance runs on trust signals collected over time — identity, history, address stability, payment behavior, prior claims, provider links. Synthetic identities are built to survive exactly those checks. A one-time verification screen at onboarding can miss a profile that has been (insurancejournal.com)erify once” to “keep reassessing.” (insurancejournal.com) ### What does “continuous trust” actually mean? Basically, stop treating identity as a yes-or-no gate at the front door. Recheck the signals as the relationship changes — at quote, login, policy change, claim submission, payout, provider update, and account recovery. Then enrich those checks with more evidence, like device (insurancejournal.com)e identity starts behaving implausibly. (techradar.com) ### Is this just a banking problem spilling over? No — though payments and ecommerce are still major targets. LexisNexis tied a lot of the agentic traffic to card payments and gaming, and it flagged especially high synthetic-identity prevalence in Latin America. But the broader lesson travels well: once criminals can cheaply create durable fake identities and automate parts of (techradar.com)oarding and digital servicing gets exposed. Insurance fits that description perfectly. (prnewswire.com) ### Bottom line? The story is not just “AI causes more fraud.” It is that fraud is getting more patient, more automated, and more convincing at the identity layer. When the fake person looks real enough to enter the system, the expensive part comes later — after the record has already been trusted. (insurancejournal.com)
