An insurer says it uncovered some 4,049 suspicious claims in the last year, a rise of 10 per cent on the year before. In total, Zurich UK detected £94.79m of fraudulent claims. Of these, almost two thirds (65pc) were for casualty incidents (‘slips and trips’), totalling 1,996 claims worth £61.14m.
This could be for minor slips and trips, or more serious injuries incurred. As for property insurance claims the insurer saw them rise by 17pc in the last year; the average claim per fraudster amounted to £21,381. And bogus motor claims went up 26pc last year worth £14.3m. Much of this can be attributed to crash for cash scams whereby fraudsters set up accidents to create an insurance claim. Zurich adds that the Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB) is investigating over 6,000 suspected fraudulent motor insurance claims, many of which could be linked to these scams.
Zurich says that this autumn it will be rolling out Quantexa’s Decision Intelligence Platform, which provides connected, contextual data across multiple sources, such as claims and policy. This canidentify high risk cases and point to relationships between entities. The business also partners with Carpe Data, which screens personal injury claims against the internet for any sign of suspicious activity.
Scott Clayton, Head of Claims Fraud at Zurich, said: “It’s crucial we remain one step ahead of fraudsters, every false claim that slips through the net impacts our honest customers. It cuts across every type of insurance, but casualty seems to be one of most common.
“Techniques are becoming more sophisticated but so is the technology we use for detection. Much of this fraud is carried out by highly organised criminal gangs so it’s not all down to opportunistic customers and claimants. It’s really important for every insurer to keep pace by using the latest detection technology, alongside human intervention to keep pace with this fast-growing challenge for the industry.”
The insurer points to the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) Crime Survey, covering England and Wales, that shows that fraud is the most common volume crime in the UK. It estimated 3.9 million fraud incidents in year ending September 2024.
Conference
From the IFB Ursula Jallow, executive director and Karleena Smith, campaigns manager, are among the invited speakers at a conference by the Association of British Insurers, in London on April 2. ABI industry-wide figures suggest that insurance fraud is rising.
GenAI landscape
According to a report by the credit checking agency Experian, GenAI has permanently altered the fraud landscape, making it more complex and sophisticated. GenAI has also enabled the “industrialisation of fraud”, where fraudsters create and deploy synthetic identities, deepfakes, and other fraud tactics. Shail Deep, Chief Operating Officer (COO), Experian EMEA and APAC, said: “As we look ahead, the integration of ML-based [machine learning] fraud prevention is a necessity for businesses to fight back against today’s sophisticated fraud threat. Our research indicates that 73pc of fraud experts believe the fraud landscape has been dramatically changed by Generative AI. As a result, over 50pc have seen an increase in losses from fraud attacks in the past year.”
Verification
Action Fraud, UK police’s fraud and cybercrime reporting line, has launched a campaign, supported by the tech firm Meta, to encourage people to take an extra step of online protection by enabling two-step verification for each of their online accounts; especially email and social media accounts.
