I hate these announcements
They are total shite and just a way of the card companies and banks to slap themselves on the back for a job badly done.
They claim this amazing reduction is due to many things such as chip and pin but the other reasons given are "the advancement of fraud prevention technology" well that's great...Chip and pin was introduced accross the country in 2004, we can see from the provided link that this means that the amount of fraud has increased by just under £1mil. Basically staying the same....
SO with all the millions of pounds spent on chip and pin and "other technologies" we are back where we started before these amazing new technologies were even tested, let alone introduced to the public. Card not present fraud....well that's gone up by a whopping £83.2Mil since 2005. The only places where we are better off is fraud on non recipt of mail, which was stopped by the couriers/royal mail and Fraud on lost and stolen cards, but that's easily explained away by saying that people would rather choose the easier option of conducting their fraud online rather than risking a face to face encounter in a shop.
Basically the banks have done fuck all but are trying to justify their bonus payments...Tossers.