About the Financial Crime Lab
Financial crime is often treated as a technical failure. We see it differently: as a human, social and systemic problem that demands a deeper understanding.
From insight to prevention.
Fraud, scams and financial exploitation take shape inside real systems, shaped by policy decisions, product design, organisational culture, economic pressure and human behaviour. We examine those systems as they actually operate, not as they are assumed to work on paper.
The Financial Crime Lab is a UK-based Community Interest Company. Our work connects research with frontline practice, bringing together deep expertise across academia, policing, law enforcement and people with lived experience of criminal harms.
Dr Nicola Harding
The Financial Crime Lab’s founder, Nicola sits at the intersection of research, policy and practice in financial crime prevention. A PhD criminologist, her work brings the behavioural and systemic dimensions of fraud into practical prevention.
Nicola’s empirical work includes the Subreddit Loan Sharks study of online illegal lending demand in the UK.
Explore the research
Prof Sarah Kingston
Sarah is a Professor of Criminal Justice & Policing; Research Lead for The National Centre for VAWG and Public Protection, The College of Policing; and Seconded Research Lead for Lancashire Constabulary.
Her expertise contributes to the Lab’s work on safeguarding, systems and the human impact of financial crime.
Abigail Taylor
Abi is a criminology graduate and Masters student at Liverpool University. The original team profile describes her summer research internship, building an online harms lived experience panel.
Christopher Sheron
A retired police officer, formerly of Merseyside Police, Christopher sits on the Board of The Financial Crime Lab, offering practitioner insight and expertise in counter-terrorism and serious organised crime.
Systems where exploitation is harder,
slower and less rewarding.
We work with organisations, policymakers and practitioners who want to move beyond reactive controls and towards prevention by design, protecting people as well as organisations.