Insurers discovered approximately 13,000 cases of fraud in 2020. In doing so, they managed to prevent an amount of more than 88 million euros from being wrongly paid out to fraudsters. This is evident from the annual figures of the Centre for Combating Insurance Crime (CBV) of the Dutch Association of Insurers.
The financial damage caused by insurance fraud affects the premiums for all insured persons in the Netherlands. Richard Weurding, managing director of the Association: "It is important for all of us that insurers detect fraud, thereby preventing premium increases as a result of undesirable behaviour for consumers and companies."
Impact of corona measures
Changes due to COVID-19, such as working from home, curfews and lockdowns, have not affected the total amount of fraud cases detected. Despite that, there is a considerable increase of almost 40% in the number of companies that were involved in fraud.
Most fraud
Most fraud investigations in 2020 registered insurers with motor insurance (3,871), such as car insurance. Many fraud investigations were also reported on home insurance (844) and travel insurance. Think of staging or fingering damage, increasing actual damage amounts, double claiming, intentional deception, falsification of supporting documents such as invoices and taking out policies under a false identity and then submitting a claim. Weurding: "Proven insurance frauds are the result of intensive cooperation and information and knowledge sharing between insurers themselves, with the police and the Public Prosecution Service. In addition, early detection of fraud prevents damage costs and that is beneficial for all insured persons."
Insurers increasingly alert to cybercrime
Due to further digitization, insurers are increasingly alert to the risks of cybercrime. In the Computer Emergency Response Team (i-Cert), insurers work together to collect, process and share information about cybercrime attacks. Weurding: "In this way, insurers actively contribute to the data protection of customers. In addition, the Association is developing an evaluation model to properly identify vulnerabilities in insurance companies that were victims of insurance fraud."
More background information can be found in the CBV factsheet Fraud 2021.
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