Insurance companies have united to step up efforts to crack down on fraudsters seeking to manipulate the UK insurance market with bogus claims and duping innocent people into buying fake insurance policies.

In 2023 alone, 84,400 fraudulent claims worth £1.1 billion were detected by the Association of British Insurers (ABI), a 16% increase in the number of detected claims compared to the previous year. 

Crash for cash scams are becoming a significant issue. This sees fraudsters recklessly orchestrate accidents to put forward an insurance claim, putting innocent lives at risk. Fraudsters may also make claims for accidents that never happened.

The Insurance Fraud Bureau is currently investigating over 6,000 suspected fraudulent motor insurance claims, which could be linked to crash for cash scams. In total, this is estimated to be worth over £70 million in potential fraud.

The new voluntary charter is designed to identify loopholes in the insurance market, enhance collaboration and criminal justice outcomes, better understand the scale of the problem and improve victim support.

Pledges include:

• the National Crime Agency’s National Assessment Centre conducting a review into the role of professional enablers in the insurance sector – where someone provides false evidence to support a bogus insurance claim;
• identifying policies being exploited by ‘illegal insurance intermediaries’ – someone pretending to be a broker or selling completely fake insurance to customers;
• strengthening data security measures to stop insurance fraudsters using customer details to target people; and
• reviewing the tactics and websites being used by fraudsters to promote bogus insurance offers – this includes looking at the vulnerable victims’ notifications process, which has proven successful in the banking sector, to better identify and support victims of insurance fraud.