Society simply tolerates insurance fraud: ICBC report

ICBC is further clamping down on insurance fraud as a new survey shows its customers are convinced society simply tolerates fraudsters.

The ICBC customer survey shows that 47 per cent of customers feel that committing auto insurance fraud is an accepted practice in B.C.

It also found that 79 per cent of respondents felt that up to half of all claims made with ICBC contain an element of fraud.

“Industry estimates suggest about 20 per cent of all insurance claims costs contain an element of fraud,” ICBC special investigations unit senior manager, Chris Fairbridge said, adding the survey results are troubling.

“Fraud by its very nature is difficult to detect but what I can say is we are tackling it and going after fraudsters hard.”

Fairbridge said the corporation is launching a public awareness campaign along with the survey results to make it known they’re monitoring the issue and have a number of measures in place to combat the problem.

“From increasing staffing levels to introducing software that’ll sift through data to look through fraud and also we’re taking a stronger stance against fraud,” Fairbridge said.

“We will be going after fraudsters with everything that we have available to us, which can include recommending criminal charges to crown counsel or going after them civilly through the courts.”

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He said the corporation has ramped up the size of its special investigations unit, and has done additional training with adjusters to better equip them to find cases of fraud. This is on top of existing measures in place including analytic tools programmed to target suspected fraud.

There are various kinds of fraud being detected and it can take several forms but the most common, Fairbridge said, is people exaggerating the extent of their injuries, adding more damage to their vehicles that wasn’t a result of a crash or even lying about pre-existing injuries.

If this most recent initiative to target and reduce fraud proves effective, it could mean savings for the customer.

“As people have seen with the financial situation we are in, we are working hard with government and one of the main things is to change the insurance model. That will be the biggest part of reducing costs and combating fraud is another step we can take to reducing claims costs,” Fairbridge said.

ICBC is anticipating $43-million in cost savings this year and $49-million in the years to come as a result of these efforts to combat fraud.

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