The ABI has detailed that the number of detected insurance application and claim frauds exposed every day has reached 1,3000, with two fraudsters per week being convicted of insurance fraud. The ABI has also indicated that a fraudulent claim for £1.2 million has been detected.

The annual detected fraud figures calculated by ABI, reveal the lengths which insurance cons are willing to go to cheat their insurers. The total number of fraudulent claims and applications detected in 2018, at 469,000, rose by 3% from 2017, with their value increasing by 6%. Every single day, 1,300 insurance scams are uncovered, with the average con of £12,000. A preacher, a rock guitarist pensioner, and an award-winning hotelier were among the insurance cheats exposed.

The Association’s latest figures reveal that in 2018, 469,000 insurance frauds were detected by insurers. Of this amount, 98,000 were fraudulent claims, with 371,000 being dishonest insurance applications. The number of fraudulent claims detected fell 6% in 2017, while the number of dishonest applications for cover rose by 5%. The data has shown that the value of the 98,000 dishonest claims detected, at £1.2 billion, fell marginally by under 1% on the previous year.

Within the last year, the equivalent of two cheats every week received a criminal conviction or a caution for insurance fraud. Cases investigated by the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department, the specialist police insurance fraud investigation unit funded by the insurance industry, included sixteen people involved in a crash for cash crime gang who received a collective 33 years in jail sentences, and a man convicted of selling fake motor insurance who was jailed for two years.

One instance of insurance fraud emerged when a preacher was jailed for 10 months after being found guilty of staging a car crash. He bought motor insurance using another person’s details, then contacted the insurer saying he had crashed the car into another vehicle. However, he owned the vehicle he said he had crashed into, and the car he said he had been driving was in a church car park at the time.

Another instance was when an award-winning hotelier was caught out claiming £34,000 in disability income from his insurer saying that his depression and anxiety meant he could not work, when he was, in fact, running a hotel. He received a 14-month suspended prison sentence.

A similar instance was when a retired fridge engineer dropped his claim for hearing loss caused by his work, when it emerged that he was a frontman in a rock ’n’ roll band. Claim documents denied that he had any noisy hobbies. The judges gave the insurer permission to bring a case for contempt of court.

ABI’s manager, fraud and financial crime, Mark Allen, said: “Insurance fraud is the scourge of honest insurance customers who make genuine claims. Insurance cheats can be ingenious, and are constantly looking for new scams to exploit, which is why the industry makes no apology for spending around £250 million a year on measures to tackle this crime. Spearheaded by the Insurance Fraud Bureau and the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department, there will be no let-up in the industry’s determination to root out fraudsters and press for the stiffest possible penalties for these cheats.”

Ben Fletcher, director of the Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB), said: “(This) announcement by the ABI shows that organised motor fraud is still a big problem and one that the insurance industry, working together with the police, will continue to tackle. Fraudsters are constantly reinventing themselves and application fraud and liability are areas of growth that we now need to focus on. It’s also important that members of the public continue to report suspected fraudsters anonymously through our Cheatline service, which is a valuable tool for disrupting fraudsters.”

Detective chief inspector and head of the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department, Andrew Fyfe, added: “The actions of insurance fraudsters increases premiums for honest customers and costs the insurance industry millions of pounds a year. Not only that, certain tactics used by these fraudsters, such as crash for cash claims, can put the lives of innocent members of the public at risk. For this reason, IFED continues to come down hard on insurance fraudsters; achieving convictions and other sanctions against these criminals on a weekly basis.

“Whilst we are pleased more and more fraudsters are behind bars, we will not be resting on our laurels. We will continue our dedicated work, alongside our partners in the insurance industry, to find those committing fraud and put them before the courts to ensure justice is done.”