What types of insurance fraud are there?
Insurance fraud comes in all shapes and sizes. Not all people who commit insurance fraud see themselves as fraudsters. Because how bad is it if you quickly change the coverage of your car insurance, before you claim the damage? Or if you conceal the fact that your previous insurance was cancelled by an insurer? Yet these are all forms of insurance fraud. In this article we will take a closer look at the different types of insurance fraud.
What exactly is insurance fraud?
Insurance fraud is the deliberate deception of an insurer, whereby the fraudster aims to gain an undue advantage for himself. According to the Dutch Association of Insurers, car insurance, home contents insurance and liability insurance are the areas most affected by fraud.
Types of insurance fraud
There are different types of insurance fraud. You can commit insurance fraud before entering into an insurance agreement, for instance by providing incorrect data to the insurer. You can also commit insurance fraud after entering into an insurance agreement. Here are some examples:
Lying or concealing when applying for insurance
Insurance fraud when applying for insurance is a regular occurrence. Someone provides false information in order to increase the chance of acceptance. Before an insurer accepts an insurance application, it always asks a number of acceptance questions. Acceptance questions are, for example:
- Have you ever been disqualified from driving?
- Has your insurance ever been cancelled or refused by another insurer?
- Have you come into contact with the police or justice system as a suspect in the past eight years?
If one of these questions is true, you must always answer it with 'Yes'. If you do not answer the questions truthfully, you are committing insurance fraud.
Intentionally causing damage
It often happens that someone deliberately causes damage in order to receive a benefit. For example, by staging a collision or driving into something on purpose. It is then up to the insurers to prove that this really is fraud. That is why a specialist always comes along to look at the case. There are always a number of things that people overlook when committing insurance fraud. For example, people do not think about the fact that a window has to be smashed from the outside and this is done from the inside. This way, an insurer quickly realises that fraud has been committed.
Claiming more damage than was actually suffered
This is one of the most common types of insurance fraud. Some people can't help but declare a number of additional items when claiming damages, which really shouldn't be claimed at all. For example, giving up an extra phone after a burglary. Or claiming a few old dents in the car after a collision or parking accident. They exaggerate the actual damage or the number of items stolen, so they get more compensation from their insurer.
Pretending to suffer damage or distorting the facts
Insurers regularly see people pretend that damage has been suffered, while this is not the case at all. They do this by, for example, reporting a laptop as stolen, while they themselves have lost it. Or they submit a rejected claim again, but then with a different story so that it is covered by the insurance. They twist the facts so that the insurer has to pay compensation.
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