Fraud losses leapt by 30% in the first half of the year as criminals turned to investment frauds increasingly pushed via social media.

Trade body UK Finance reported a 95% rise in investment fraud losses overall from £55.2m to £107.7m.

The body said that many victims of investment scams were lured by adverts on social media promising high returns on investments.

UK Finance members reported that investment fraud is having an increasing impact on both case volumes and associated losses, as criminals look to impersonate private banks and investment firms.

There have been more cases of fraudsters setting up cloned websites or social media accounts to draw in unsuspecting consumers. The lack of regulation around social media accounts means this type of fraud is more prevalent and hard to prevent.

In total £753.9m was stolen through fraud of all kind in the first half, an increase of 30% compared to the same period last year.

Unauthorised payment fraud losses were £398.6m, an increase of 7%. The banking and finance industry prevented a further £736m of attempted unauthorised fraud which means that £6.49 in every £10 of attempted unauthorised fraud was blocked.

In previous years the largest fraud losses have been unauthorised frauds mainly committed using payment cards.

In May, user-generated content, covering crimes such as investment fraud, was added to the list of harms that companies will now have to police in order to protect consumers under the government’s Online Safety Bill.

However, online advertisements are not covered by the bill, which means that consumers still have little protection against frauds due to scam adverts.

UK Finance said criminals were targeting young people to use their bank accounts to launder stolen money. There has also been an increase in the use of cryptocurrency wallets being used to take stolen money outside of the banking system quickly.

Laura Suter, head of personal finance at investment platform AJ Bell, said the figures from UK Finance revealed how susceptible people were to investment scams.

She said: "People looking for lucrative investments were also tricked into handing over their money, with an 84% increase in the number of people being lured in by attractive interest rates only to lose their savings. Recent FCA research found that people only start to think that an investment might be too good to be true when the promised return is 30% or more, showing how susceptible some people might be to scams.

"The level of fraud in the UK is now so high the banks are throwing their hands up and saying they can’t cope alone. They’re calling on the Government to intervene to drive down the level of fraud, and combine a number of industries to tackle to issue. In particular they are pointing to the likes of Google and other internet giants to help crack down on online adverts that often lure people in to ultimately be scammed."