Allianz Commercial detects record fraud volumes worth £70.7m

Authored by Allianz

Allianz Commercial detected £70.7m worth of insurance fraud in 2022, up from the £63.6m in 2021. This amounts to a £7.1m or 11.2% uptick.

Property and casualty (P&C) saw the greatest increase in fraud savings against the prior year. This trend may indicate a move away from traditional types of motor fraud such as crash-for-cash scams. However, the industry continues to see vastly exaggerated motor claims. Across property and casualty, while the number of fraud cases declined last year, the value of each case increased to record levels.

Application fraud, where a customer provides false information to purchase a policy, has grown significantly, suggesting front-end controls are detecting these lies and fabrications more effectively.

Regarding fraud at claims stage, machine learning has been increasingly helpful in detecting dishonest attempts.

Overall, a major factor in this fraud-busting success has been the excellent collaboration across Allianz’s internal teams, suppliers and the insurance industry.

James Burge, head of counter fraud at Allianz Commercial, commented: “At each economic downturn, insurers usually see fraud escalate. In the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, we didn't want our honest customers to bear any additional costs from fraudsters, which is why we were determined to detect and defeat fraud in order to protect them.”