An agreement between the Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB) and the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) to share intelligence on organised criminal gangs between the insurance industry and the police has been reviewed and renewed.
The two-way intelligence sharing agreement means access to industry data and an analytics platform that can identify trends and patterns that individual insurers cannot, so as to identify fraud rings. The information and intelligence that IFB investigations are built upon are derived from a variety of sources including intelligence sharing arrangements with public and private sector organisations, regulators and law enforcement agencies. The IFB reports that it’s co-ordinating more than 110 live operations into organised fraud, valued in excess of £120m.
Stephen Dalton, Head of Intelligence at the IFB, said:
“IFB operations provide police forces with a valuable platform from which to gather evidence, make arrests and disrupt organised criminal networks. This is demonstrated by the fact that since the IFB was created in 2006 we have worked in partnership with the police to support over 1,000 arrests leading to over 260 years in prison for convicted fraudsters. As the IFB extends its remit over the next five years to manage organised fraud across all product lines, this agreement with ACPO is an important tool for the IFB and its integral role within the insurance industry’s counter-fraud strategy.”
And for ACPO Durham Chief Constable Michael Barton said: “For the UK to become even safer, businesses have to do their bit. The renewal of this agreement demonstrates that ACPO, by sharing information with the insurance industry, can have a positive impact on the lives of the public by disrupting organised insurance fraud.”
