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 adjust your car insurance coverage before you claim the damage? Or if you fail to mention that an insurer has ever canceled your previous insurance? Yet these are all forms of insurance fraud. In this article, we look closely at different types of insurance fraud.

What exactly is insurance fraud?

Insurance fraud is the deliberate misleading of an insurer, whereby the fraudster aims to benefit himself unfairly. 

Types of insurance fraud

There are different types of insurance fraud. You can commit insurance fraud before entering into an insurance contract by providing incorrect information to the insurer. You can also commit insurance fraud after taking out the insurance. We mention here a few examples:

Lying or concealing when applying for insurance

Insurance fraud when applying for insurance is a regular occurrence. Someone provides incorrect information to increase the chance of acceptance. Before an insurer accepts an insurance application, it always asks several acceptance questions. Acceptance questions are, for example:

• Have you ever been disqualified from driving?
• Has your insurance ever been canceled or refused by another insurer?
• Have you come into contact with the police or the judiciary as a suspect in the past eight years?

You must always answer’ Yes’ if any of these questions are correct. You are committing insurance fraud if you do not answer the questions truthfully.

Intentionally causing damage

It often happens that someone deliberately causes damage to receive benefits. For example, staging a collision everywhere or deliberately driving into something. Insurers then have the task of demonstrating that it concerns fraud. That is why a specialist always comes by to look at the case. There are always several things that people overlook when committing insurance fraud. For example, it is not considered that a window must be smashed from the outside, and this is done from the inside. For example, an insurer quickly realizes that fraud has been committed.

Claiming more damage than suffered

This is one of the most common types of insurance fraud. Some people cannot help but indicate several extra things when claiming damage, which should not be claimed at all, for example, by giving up an extra telephone after a burglary. Or claim a few old dents in the car after a collision or parking accident. They exaggerate the actual damage or number of items stolen to get more compensation from their insurer.

Pretending damage has been done or distorting the facts.

Insurers regularly experience that people pretend damage has been suffered when this is not the case. They do this by, for example, reporting a laptop as stolen while they have lost it themselves. Or they submit a rejected claim again, but with a different story so that it falls within the insurance coverage. They distort the facts so that the insurer has to pay compensation.