Profile of a household insurance fraudster

Insurance fraud is a major problem. Research by the Association of British Insurers (ABI) has found that every hour there are 15 fraudulent insurance claims detected and that in 2011 detected fraud amounted to £983 million. This
represented 5.7% of all claims in 2011 and in total there were 138,814 fraudulent insurance claims that were discovered. In addition to this there are the many fraudulent claims that slip though the insurers’ counter fraud controls. The ABI has suggested this could amount to another £2billion. To put this in perspective, benefits fraud, which secures significant media and political attention, amounted to £1.2 billion in 2011. Insurance fraud is therefore potentially double the size of benefits fraud.