GB : How UK motor insurers can drive lower insurance premiums

Published: Wednesday August 30, 2017

A blog by Scott Woodcock, Business Development Manager, insurance sector.

Cash for crash

According to the Insurance Fraud Bureau the number of 'crash for cash' insurance claims costs the UK £340 million every year, paid for by honest motorists. These scams see criminal gangs making fraudulent claims on car insurance. They have resulted in both innocent lives being put at risk as well as, according to the Association of British Insurers, an increase of around £50 a year in higher premiums passed on to honest policyholders. This has risen from £13 a year in 2013.

This form of fraud is often planned in advance with fraudsters knowing when, where and how they will target their victim, often targeting more vulnerable drivers who are less likely to cause a fuss when caught up in an 'accident'. Fraudsters adopt a number of techniques to make it look like the accident was not their fault, including slamming down on brakes for no obvious reasons, causing victims to have little time to react and therefore resulting in a collision. Following this, victims receive claims with inflated costs for repair, whiplash injuries and high costs for hire cars.

The insurance industry has seen some uncertainty in recent times, especially with the currently unknown outcomes of 'Brexit', the Ogden discount rate changes, the continuing impact of fraud and the unanswered questions surrounding GDPR.

One thing that is certain and consistent amongst insurers is the requirement to be more efficient and innovative when it comes to the use of data for fighting fraud. With a number of insurers taking significant steps to detect and stop fraud, there has been a direct increase in the number of claims being declined for suspected fraud. One major insurer recently detected a staggering quarter of a million pounds of fraudulent claims being made every single day in the last year.

According to the UK insurance industry around 1 in 10 personal injury claims are linked to crash for cash scams, with more than 50% of motor injury claims being organised. It now makes it more important than ever to investigate these claims properly and thoroughly, to ensure that insurers are not paying out for fraudulent claims.

Insurers need to detect suspicious claims and stop fraud, but they must also make claims processes more efficient so as not to prolong the claiming process for genuine customers. By detecting fraudulent claims, the £336 million insurance fraud costs each year would be reduced and the customer experience for genuine claimants would be improved.

How we can improve processing efficiency

Our market-leading GBG Connexus solution is already used by a number of the UK's top insurers to great effect to combat this problem. However, in recent months we have been asked the same three questions… 'How can GBG help us be more efficient? How can GBG help us be more innovative? How can GBG help us gain a competitive advantage?

We can answer these concerns with two solutions: the GBG Connexus API and the GBG Connexus Automated Intelligence Report.

The API gives you the ability to integrate GBG data directly into existing fraud tools and claims management systems, in-house data products and visualisation tools. This removes manual searching and generates near instant results.

The Automated Intelligence Report allows you to submit records to GBG as often as required (every hour, half day or evening, for example) which are then run internally by our automated services. We search against various data sources and produce the results in a bespoke 'Intelligence Report'.

Intelligence reports can pull together names, addresses, telephone numbers, emails, social media profiles, adverse financial data and a deceased flag in a matter of seconds. All of this data insight can allow insurers to quickly make a decision on how to proceed, as well as establish links to other known entities from reverse searching. The ability to quickly drive decisions means more time spent adding value to a claim or risk policy.

Since using this service, our clients have told us that we are able to reduce the time taken to complete this work from 20-30 minutes per record, to under 30 seconds.

This time saving allows insurers to begin a more detailed investigation, taking the 'grunt work' away from highly trained fraud investigators who can instead immediately focus on the detail of the case.

If you'd like to discuss GBG Connexus with one of our experts, contact sales.enquiries@gbgplc.com