Motor insurance fraud is estimated to cost the UK insurance market over £1 billion annually. Opportunist claims are bad enough, however, many fraudulent motor claims are orchestrated by highly organised and sophisticated criminal gangs.
Hill Dickinson is fraud unit has an unrivalled ability to identify, evidence and manage fraudulent motor insurance claims. We provide assistance to the Insurance Fraud Bureau , and a range of clients who have been able to decline millions of pounds of false payments in relation to:
- Staged accidents
- Induced road traffic accidents
- Phantom passengers claims
- Fraudulent injury and special damage claims
- Organised fraud rings
Netfoil gives us a unique ability to combat organised motor insurance fraud. Insurer client and data providers derive huge benefit from our ability to identify and evidence fraud rings. Acting for various clients we have prevented payments and recovered damages paid to accident management businesses responsible for orchestrating false claims.
Fraudsters also target legitimate accident management and credit hire organisations. Our proactive approach to fraud identification enables us to highlight fraudsters and bogus referral sources through regular fraud alerts.
Staged accidents
We have an unrivalled ability to advise and manage claims arising out of staged accident. Such claim take many forms from straight forward opportunist rear shunts, to multi vehicle – multi claimant paper based incidents. We have experience in handling the most straight forward to the most complex contrived accidents.
Induced accidents
Recent times have seen the emergence of a yet more sinister insurance scam – the deliberately induced accident, or ‘slam-on’. Organised fraud rings, previously content with orchestrating accidents amongst themselves and associates have started to target innocent motorists, provoking collisions to facilitate compensation payments – injury damages, hire, recovery and storage.
Commercial vehicles – articulated lorries and transit vans are particularly popular targets for the gangs. A common scenario will be the vehicle at a clear roundabout who manoeuvres as if to proceeds only to ‘slam-on’ the brakes in front of the innocent driver.
Often the apparently innocent collision will be provoked by another vehicle, the driver acting in conjunction with the claimant, as it swerves into the path of the parties causing abrupt and apparently innocent braking.
Dealt with in isolation such claims can be difficult to identify and even harder to defend. Netfoil and our Intelligence Analysts have a singular ability to identify claim patterns, and bring similar fact evidence before the court to defeat these claims and to identify the criminals organising these scams.
Phantom passenger claims
Opportunist and organised phantom passenger claims are not uncommon, and arise as a result of both genuine and staged accidents. Many of the induced accidents we encounter feature vehicles packed with claimants, all of who claim to have been injured. Frequently, the number of claimants, or their age, sex and description does not accord with the evidence of the innocent motorist.
We have the expertise and knowledge to advice on such claims assisting not just the compensator but the innocent driver through the experience.
Fraudulent injury and special damage claims
Regrettably exaggeration of claims arising of road traffic accidents is all too common. Exaggeration of injuries can often be accompanied by inflated and wholly fictitious claims for loss of earnings, medical expenses, physiotherapy and the like.
Fraudulent road traffic accidents, both staged and induced accidents are regularly accompanied by inflated and bogus claims for credit hire, storage, recovery, repair, translation fees.
On occasion this activity is encouraged by claimant solicitors and those associated with the management of the claim.
Netfoil data analysis enables us to identify previous claims, and allows us to proactively warn our data provider and insurer clients of those solicitors and high street accident management businesses responsible for these claims.
Organised fraud
Insurers, credit hire organisations, and the genuine accident management businesses are all potential targets for organised insurance fraud rings. Hill Dickinson's fraud unit has developed the most sophisticated counter fraud solution available to the UK Insurance and claim management market. We act on behlf of Insurers, Lloyds syndicates, credit hire organisations, commercial clients, and accident management business to avoid and manage insurance fraud.
Netfoil captures detailed data in relation to over 40 million claim records. Over six years our intelligence unit has developed data mining techniques providing a singular ability to identify organised motor insurance fraud. Our clients and data providers benefit from regular fraud alerts highlighting the activities of rogue accident management businesses and serial claimants.
When clients identify insurance fraud traditional methods of investigation can be hugely expensive and take many months, often wasting more resource than is ultimately saved.
