esure boosts fraud team to tackle rise in insurance fraud

With ABI figures showing a 24 per cent increase in insurance fraud over the last two years, esure has responded to this upward trend by boosting its in-house fraud and claims verification team by almost a third.

New recruits will be trained in specialist detection techniques such as cognitive interviewing which is designed to reveal tell-tale inaccuracies and inconsistencies in fabricated stories. This expertise, combined with the company's computer-based Voice Risk Analysis technology that identifies minor changes in someone's voice caused by stress, will continue to help esure tackle the growing problem of fabricated and exaggerated insurance claims.

A recession and general squeeze in household purse-strings often causes people, no matter what their financial or social backgrounds, to view insurers as a way to improve their financial situation by:

generating cash flowing e.g. by fabricating a car theft or writing off a car to get a cash settlement;
upgrading or getting a new/replacement item e.g. dropping a TV to claim through accidental damage cover on a home policy;

repairing completely unrelated damage on a vehicle e.g. claiming for repairs to expensive gear box systems or ad hoc electrical faults as part of a minor collision;

covering the cost of a voluntary or compulsory excess by slightly inflating a claim e.g. adding an extra item into a theft claim such as a laptop in the boot of a stolen car or an additional power tool in the garden shed.

Due to the company-wide crackdown in detecting fraudulent claims, esure has also seen an increase in ‘walk-away' claims. Policyholders are given the opportunity to close their claim at any point after registering it with no ramifications or mark on their records. An answer phone is now available for policyholders to call out-of-hours to avoid speaking to a call centre agent to close their claim, such as leaving a message informing esure that they have found their ‘stolen' vehicle with no damage.

Last month esure identified a hike in fabricated low-value car theft claims where an increasing number of ‘stolen' car claims for vehicles worth less than £5,000 were being lodged. In such cases, the cars are often fraudulently hidden in lock-ups rather than stolen. esure responded quickly by stepping up its use of sophisticated cognitive interviewing techniques on all reported ‘stolen unrecovered' low-value car claims in an attempt to stem the surge in these types of claims.

Gordon Hannah, Director of Claims and Operations at esure, said: "The ABI's figures highlight the recent surge in insurance fraud - both when policies are taken out and when claims are made. Left untackled, this type of fraudulent activity will have a knock-on effect of increasing premiums for millions of honest motorists and homeowners across the UK.

"We have found cognitive interviewing to be an effective way of spotting and clamping down on attempted fraud during the claims process. That's why we are strengthening our team of skilled interviewers to crackdown on claims cheats.

"Call centre agents are also extremely vigilant at the front end when a policy is bought over the phone, such as looking for evidence of fronting. Meanwhile, behind the scenes all new policyholder details are run through a shared industry database to detect any mismatch in addresses, credit card details or undisclosed claims.

"Insurance is there to help honest people with genuine claims and we're doing all we can to crackdown on people who are trying to abuse the insurance system in these difficult economic times."