Stamping out dodgy claims ought to benefit us all
By silicon.com
Published: Tuesday 22 November 2005
Many people are tempted to top up insurance claims. With the cost of insurance these days they might feel it’s only fair to add a few CDs or an extra iPod to the claim. After all, they would have got stolen in the burglary – if they’d ever been bought in the first place.
If insurers can cut out fraud – which can be found in as many as one in five claims – they should be able to reduce their costs.
Grabbing a bit back from the insurer is seen as a bit like cheating the taxman – naughty but not really bad.
In the past, insurers have had to just shrug and accept the claim because proving the customer wrong was pretty hard. Which meant that their costs went up – and premiums rose as well.
Which created a vicious circle – insurers up the costs of a policy, so more people feel the need to top up their claims to recoup a bit of the cost of insurance, forcing another price hike from insurers.
Nobody really benefits from this insurance inflation – especially not the people buying insurance but being lucky enough not to have to claim on it.
There is a bit of a ‘Robin Hood’ factor to getting one over on the insurer – which is why high-tech security is seen by some as giving the insurer an unfair advantage. But it’s not a game.
If insurers can cut out fraud – which can be found in as many as one in five claims – they should be able to reduce their costs.
And if they can (and yes it’s a big if) pass that back to the consumers, then anti-fraud technologies may benefit us all.