It looks like every pound spent on addressing insurance fraud in the UK is well worth it.

Citing data from the Association of British Insurers (ABI), aPress Association report published by Yahoo Finance today reveals that 562,000 scams were detected by insurance companies in 2017. The figure is made up of dishonest insurance applications (449,000) – a big chunk of which came from motor – and fraudulent claims (113,000).

“The vast majority of insurance customers are honest, and they rightly resent fraudsters pushing up their insurance costs,” ABI director of general insurance policy James Dalton was quoted as saying. “This is why the industry makes no apology for spending around £250 million a year on measures to tackle insurance fraud.

“It is good that organised fraud fell (down 22% from 2016), especially as scams like staged accidents can often put lives at risk and involve huge amounts of money. But, with the Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB) currently investigating a rising number of suspected insurance frauds, there will be no let-up in the crackdown on the insurance cheats.”

Uncovered scams include the case of a bodybuilder who was claiming £150,000 for a supposed back injury but was caught on film doing a press-up challenge.

“We don’t underestimate the challenge we face; insurance fraud is an issue that the industry takes very seriously and has been investing heavily in combating in recent years,” commented IFB director Ben Fletcher. “These results are encouraging and demonstrate to the would-be fraudster that the insurance industry is a hostile environment and every effort is being made to catch and stop them.”

Source – Insurance Business magazine