Insurers in the UK detected £1.16 billion (US$1.5 billion) worth of fraudulent insurance claims in 2024 – a 2% increase from £1.14 billion reported during the previous year, according to the Association British Insurers.
Insurers uncovered at least 98,400 fraud-related claims in 2024, a 12% rise from 88,100 in 2023, said the London-based trade association in its latest fraud report.
Motor insurance continues to be the area where insurers see the most illicit claims occurring, said the ABI, noting that they detected 51,700 motor scams worth £576 million ($757 million), which is 5% more than in 2023 and represents 53% of the total number claims made throughout the year.
Breaking down motor insurance figures, the ABI said, the value of fraudulent claims for domestic policies increased by £36 million ($47.3 million), or 9%, from 2023, while the figure for commercial policies remained relatively stable – rising by £1.7 million ($2.2 million), or 1.3%, year-on-year.
Insurers also identified 18,700 deceptive property insurance claims worth £189 million ($248.4 million) – 11% more than the volume of claims detected during the previous year.
When looking at the types of fraud scammers attempted to commit, exaggerated loss remains the most common. This is when someone deliberately attempts to increase the cost of a claim beyond its true value. Claims for this type of fraud rose by 10% and amounted to £466 million ($612.4 million).
Alongside this, insurers prevented an estimated 684,800 fraudulent insurance applications, a 7.4% increase from 2023, the ABI said, explaining that application fraud occurs when important information is purposefully misrepresented or hidden for financial gain when a policy is incepted.
“Fraud remains a persistent concern for insurance providers, particularly as economic pressures fuel both opportunistic and organized claims. Application fraud, in particular, is rising fast, with more than 680,000 cases stopped last year. This is against a backdrop of elevated shopping and switching activity as we have seen in motor,” said Dan Cicchetti, associate vice president of client engagement, UK & Ireland, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, in a comment about the ABI report.
“The challenge for insurance providers is to stop fraudsters at the front door without creating delay or friction for honest customers. This is where automated no claims discount validation, identity validation, email intelligence and named driver checks make a real difference,” Cicchetti continued. “Email risk scores and focusing as much attention on named driver risk as that of the proposer are already helping to spot ghost brokers and other fraud risks at point of quote or policy inception.”