Recently, the UK Government announced the 2025 Budget. It contains several key measures which may impact public sector OSINT usage in the coming year.
From benefit fraud concerns to counter-economic crime provisions, read on to understand what the Budget means for the OSINT community.
Fraud
The 2025 Budget addresses fraud both directly and indirectly. This is a promising sign, as fraudsters stole an estimated £629.3 million in the first half of 2025 alone.1
Although OSINT isn’t a complete solution, it must be part of any effective counter-fraud strategy. There are three key reasons for this:
- Fraud is increasingly carried out by large, organised networks. OSINT is crucial to understand these networks. This is both because much open source data is inherently network-based, and because it allows investigators to explore connections across a variety of sources and uncover hidden links.
- Fraudsters often run complex operations in order to evade detection and prosecution. OSINT allows for the combination of both official and unregulated sources, giving investigators a fuller picture.
- Like other criminals, fraudsters are exploiting digital technology to get ahead. For example, two-thirds of all fraud began online in the first half of 2025. Since much internet data is open source, this necessitates OSINT usage to counter fraud.
Below, we’ll unpack what the Budget means for fraud in the UK and how OSINT fits into the picture.
Suggested reading: learn more about how fraudsters are leveraging digital technology in our recent report.
Increased susceptibility
The budget contains two key tax changes which are likely to make UK citizens more susceptible to fraud.
Firstly, income tax and national insurance thresholds have been frozen for a further three years. However, salaries will continue to rise to meet inflation, meaning that more people will end up paying more tax. For some, this will place them in a position of greater financial insecurity.
As a result, they’re likely to be more susceptible to fraud. Essentially, if someone is preoccupied with financial worries, they’re likely to be more distracted. This means they might not be able to employ the usual level of scrutiny when confronted with fraud.2 On top of this, greater financial insecurity usually means someone must make their funds go a longer way. As such, they may be more likely to be defrauded through a promised discount or an advertised investment scheme.
The second tax change to mention also hints at a potential vulnerability to investment fraud. The Budget included a two percentage point increase for tax on savings income and a reduction of the cash ISA limit to £12,000. Individuals affected by these changes will want to ensure their savings remain tax efficient. Consequently, they may be more likely to become victim to investment fraud.
Public sector organisations and financial services firms alike need to be prepared for a potential rise in fraud. As we’ve established above, OSINT is essential in helping them counter this new wave of fraud effectively.
Benefit fraud crackdown
One of the most-discussed changes in the Budget was the scrapping of the two-child limit for universal credit and tax credit. This change has reignited discussions surrounding the amount lost to welfare system fraud.
Perhaps pre-empting this, the Budget also included a renewed commitment to tackling benefit fraud. It promised £1.2 billion in savings by 2031 through the identification of incorrect payments. Alongside this, it marked an extension of DWP’s Targeted Case Review.
In order to achieve these savings, OSINT will be essential. From analysing pattern of life to uncovering wider fraud networks, OSINT provides crucial context in welfare fraud investigations.
The difficulty, however, is that a large number of cases must be reviewed to meet this goal. Manual OSINT is time-consuming and error-prone, making it unsuitable for this use case. But technology can support the public sector here, allowing them to use OSINT efficiently and achieve – or even exceed – the £1.2 billion goal.
Suggested reading: Learn more about how Videris Automate is bringing efficiency to OSINT here.
Enhancing the fight against crime
Beyond fraud, the Budget included several provisions aimed at tackling crime. OSINT is a key component of countering crime in the digital age, although the Budget doesn’t make specific reference to it. Below, we’ll take a closer look at some of the counter-crime measures mentioned and what they could mean for OSINT.
Boosting funding for Law Enforcement
The 2025 Budget references additional funding for law enforcement, which is a promising sign as crime grows more complex. However, it’s important to note that more personnel isn’t enough. As criminal operations develop and move online, law enforcement officers need the right training, tools and technology to stay ahead.
The same is true of OSINT. It’s a crucial resource in countering modern crime, but organisations can only extract its true value when the right processes and technologies are in place. Let’s look at some common barriers to countering crime to understand what measures organisations should take to achieve effective OSINT:
- Crime is growing more complex. Criminals operate in large networks where relationships are intentionally concealed to obscure criminality. OSINT can help here – the diversity of sources allows analysts to get a truer view of connections. However, collecting data from multiple sources and presenting it for analysis is time-consuming and error prone. Technology streamlines this process, allowing individual investigators to dig deeper, faster.
- The digital world has transformed crime – new typologies are gaining prominence. Investigators need the right training to understand how best to counter these new forms of crime. For example, cryptocurrency is often involved in fraud and money laundering operations. With the right knowledge, these transactions become trackable.
- More data is available to investigators than ever before, especially if they’re using OSINT. Unfortunately, much of this is inaccurate, misleading or simply irrelevant. Consulting fewer sources isn’t the answer, as this compromises insight. Instead, the right tools allow analysts to cut through the noise and find relevant data at speed.
The impact of these provisions has yet to be seen. It’s clear that investment in everything from people, to training, to tools is needed for an effective approach.
Provisions to tackle the economic crime threat
It’s worth noting that the Budget made specific reference to the threat of economic crime. In particular, it marked a commitment to tackling money laundering by increasing the Economic Crime Levy. Funds will go towards boosting law enforcement resource, including technology, and improving public-private data sharing.
These provisions seem to be a positive step. Money laundering has links to almost every other serious crime, as criminals must launder funds to see profit. Therefore, disrupting it has the potential to have wider knock-on effects for many crime operations. Likewise, the focus on technology recognises its increasingly crucial role in enabling effective counter-economic crime processes.
Although the Budget doesn’t detail the exact spending focuses for these funds, we hope to see greater investment in OSINT training and tools. Our recent report, the State of OSINT 2025, tells a positive story here. Over half of investigators expect investment in OSINT to grow next year. This is good, because it’s impossible to get a full picture of money laundering networks without OSINT. Plus, expertise and technology are needed to ensure efficient, ethical and effective OSINT usage.
OSINT also holds some unique benefits for public-private data sharing, which the Budget mentioned as a priority. Because it’s drawn from publicly available information, it can often be shared more readily than closed intelligence.
Suggested reading: For more information on how OSINT enables effective public-private partnerships, read this blog.
Conclusions
It’s clear that public sector organisations should be using OSINT to counter emerging and existing threats as suggested in the Budget. We’ve yet to see what impact the Budget will have on the counter-crime landscape, but we hope to see the teams responsible for meeting the Budget’s goals invest more heavily in OSINT. In order to realise OSINT’s true value, we expect to see additional investment in technology too.
If your team is looking to get more out of OSINT when countering fraud, money laundering or organised crime, we’re here to help. Book a call with one of our experts today to learn how to achieve efficient OSINT without missing valuable insights.
REFERENCES:
