Fraud on the increase

Public liability insurance fraud is on the rise at nearly £2 billion a year at present.

Broken down into hard numbers, the ABI discovered over 130,000 cases of suspected  fraud which represents a 9% rise from the previous year and equates to nearly 2,500 insurance fraud claims every week.

Other figures from the ABI report are :-

• home insurance equated to some 66,000 exaggerated or false claims
• some 40,000 false claims related to motor insurance
• Public liability claims relate to personal injury, typically where the claims are exaggerated relating to the ongoing effect of the injury on the ability to work

Fraud is of course nothing new, but it is getting worse, probably due to the difficult economic conditions. In response the ABI has advised that it is planning to set up a centralized fraud register to provide a better database for crosschecking and identifying suspect individuals and claims.