Insurance fraud has many fathers. An ailing economy, greed or an opportunity to right perceived injustices all tempt consumers to try to make money at their insurance company's expense.
A new survey of 1,013 adults in the United States from Dublin-based Accenture examines consumer rationales and attitudes about insurance fraud and highlights its implications for insurers.
Not surprising, the key findings hold that claims frequency and fraud increase in a difficult economy. More than three-quarters of the survey's respondents agreed that people are more likely to commit insurance fraud during an economic downturn than they are during normal economic times. This contention is buttressed by actual industry results. The National Insurance Crime Bureau notes that questionable insurance claims rose 14% in the United States in the first half of 2010.
Another linkage the survey brought to light was the connection between poor customer service and fraud. A majority of respondents (55%) said that poor customer service is likely to cause an individual to commit fraud against that company. The numbers also revealed an interesting demographic slant to this sentiment. The proportion of respondents who view poor service quality as a trigger that may make a person more fraud-prone is highest among men (61%), younger consumers (68%) and those making less than $50,000 annually (58%).
Accordingly, Accenture counsels insurers to strive for better customer service on the whole as a hedge against fraud. If carriers can reduce the occurrences of "one-off" fraud induced by poor customer service, they can focus their investments and efforts on organized fraud rings. Among the strategies the report recommends to squelch fraud is a commitment to adopting better business rules for anomaly detection and the incorporation of predictive modeling and link analysis.
