Is it just an innocent mistake or is it fraud?

A police officer might stop a vehicle for any number of reasons, but when there are potential inconsistencies on the insurance policy how do they know if the motorist is telling the truth? Innocent mistakes happen, and it is possible that the driver could have accidentally mistyped their age as 52 instead of 25. There may be more concerning discrepenancies such as the car being registered miles away from where the police stop has taken place. When multiple inconsistencies occur between the policy details and the answers being given by the driver, any police officer could be forgiven for thinking fraud, not mistake.

Police officers at the road side tell us these questionable scenarios are increasingly commonplace and in response to this feedback, MIB invited Aviva and DLG to pilot a new process. If the officer suspects fraud, they now inform the agent at the MIB Police Helpline when they call to check the driver’s insurance records. Instead of only seeking clarification of the insurance status of the driver with the underwriter as they normally would, this pilot now sees MIB talking directly to the insurer's counter-fraud team. With access to their internal fraud systems the call takes on a different purpose.

There are a number of benefits this pilot hopes to achieve including:

• Increased application fraud detection - 52% calls in the small pilot resulted in policies being voided instantly 
• Fewer uninsured vehicles on the road - 78% of vehicles stopped were seized by police
• More engaged police officers - police can now take appropriate action in circumstances where they previously felt unsupported.
• Insurers are able to send a strong message to policyholders who may be committing fraud, which will ultimately benefit honest customers.

The pilot has only been running for a couple of months but already both Aviva and DLG have decided to make access to their counter-fraud teams, in the agreed circumstances, a permanent service. In fact, further investigations on one case has led to the identification of 19 other linked policies and several hundred suspect IP addresses which are regularly appearing on other fraud intelligence networks.

Over the coming months the pilot will be made available to all insurers. This will widen the opportunity to root out those who try and cheat the system.

Contact Tina Flowers at tflowers@mib.org.uk for more information on participating in the scheme.