Insurance Taskmaster: Detecting motor fraud in and around Euro 96 (1996)

Insurance Post and Verisk tasked six industry rising stars to solve some of the biggest historic challenges faced by the market over the past two centuries.

In this episode, the contestants wake up and it is the summer of 1996. They are on the front line, combatting the burgeoning issue of insurance fraud, something which seems to be prevalent in the motor space.

With this in mind, a claim has been flagged dated 26 June, the day that coincidently England lost to Germany on penalties in that year’s Euro football tournament in England.

The motor claim involves a John Smith, and it does not smell or feel right. Submitting his name and address to the Motor Insurance Anti-Fraud & Theft Register, it becomes apparent that this is not the first claim he has submitted in the last 12 months.

Today the teams have to devise a plan to work out if Smith is just plain unlucky; or maybe involved in something more sinister, such as carrying out stage accidents, a trend that has recently come to light.

With an hour on the clock, and the time now ticking:

• Who will score an impressive goal and uncover the truth behind Mr Smith’s claim?
• Who will crack under pressure like Gareth Southgate in the 1996 penalty shoot-out?
• Who will be one step to closer to singing: ‘It’s coming home, it’s coming home…’ as the show get ever closer to crowing a winner?

Watch the latest episode to find out.

Fraudulent claims make up a significant portion of all claims received by insurers and continue to cost the industry millions of pounds. Perhaps one of the most notable changes since 1996 is the exponential growth of the internet and digital communication. Digitalisation has revolutionised the world but it has also created new methods for criminals to commit insurance fraud.

Although insurance fraud has become more sophisticated, so has the technology to combat it. For real-time fraud analysis at the point of quote, policy inception, midterm amendment, renewal, and when a claim is made, Verisk offers advanced fraud detection to protect insurers’ bottom lines. Verisk can also automatically triage motor damage claims into repair or total-loss workflows.