Customers caught out making dodgy insurance claims

CHEATING Australians are making up all sort of stories for insurance claims but many are getting caught out for lying.

THEIR bogus insurance claims add $75 a year to your policy, but shysters are increasingly being caught red-handed lying about car accidents, the true state of their health or taking out cover after an incident has occurred.

Insurers are catching out liars more easily by scrolling through social media accounts, relying on others to dob on them, using digital DNA sources or involving police to detect fraudulent claims.

Insurance company Huddle has revealed some of the tall stories they have received which include:

— One customer lodging a car insurance claim four times previously.

— A female driver crashed into a male driver who did not have insurance so he took out a policy that night. These fraudulent documents were detected.

— A woman with a benign cyst claimed she underwent emergency surgery while in Europe but this was false and instead she attended voluntary day surgery.

Statistics from the Insurance Fraud Bureau of Australia reveals bogus claims cost the general insurance industry — this includes home and contents, motor vehicle and small business cover — about $2.2 billion annually.

Huddle’s chief executive Jason Wilby said shysters “plague the whole industry.”

But he said customers leaving a trail of digital DNA made it easier for insurers to catch out those telling fibs.

This include detecting fraudulent documents through technology or monitoring the way customers interact with insurers by phone or email.

“There’s soft fraud where generally quite honest people may exaggerate something to increase the value of their claim,’’ Mr Wilby said.

“Then there’s hard fraud, where people are buying insurance with the sole objective of committing fraud and claiming some financial benefits.”

Travel insurance is one of the areas that insurers receive fraudulent claims.

He said some cars can “record when accidents happen” using their internal computer systems which catches out cheating claimants.

Insurance Council of Australia’s spokesman Campbell Fuller said “most insurance fraud was through exaggerated claims.

“Insurers are increasingly sophisticated at detecting fraud at all levels,’’ he said.

“If you are going to lie in an insurance claim you have a good chance of getting caught and people who lie on a claim end up costing all policy holders more.”

Mr Fuller said the NSW Government estimated insurance fraud costs ever customer $75 a year per policy.

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@sophieelsworth

Originally published as Customers caught out making dodgy insurance claims