Cyber criminals are using spoof bank accounts, fake investment opportunities and pension schemes that are too good to be true to drive a rise in “authorised” financial scams, data shows.

Scammers are increasingly convincing their victims to hand over their financial information under the guise of being from their bank, utility company or other trusted entity in what are dubbed “authorised” attacks, the latest figures from the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) show.

The service received complaints about 25,000 new scam cases in the past year, with a “substantial” proportion relating to scams. Of these, the FOS said that 9,370 cases were related to authorised fraud, an increase of 20 per cent on the previous financial year.

The watchdog said that scammers are increasingly using social media to target victims, and often will use false investment opportunities as a way to harvest details from them.

Of the authorised fraud complaints it received, the FOS said around a quarter related to people not getting goods and services they had ordered online, while a further quarter were investment scams, which are up around a sixth on last year’s levels.

Scams around pension schemes were the most popular among scammers, while there were a growing number of criminals who lured in customers using cryptocurrency investment opportunities.

Another fifth of the FOS’s complaints centred on incidents when customers were sent an email from someone purporting to be their bank, asking…