Insurance Fraud Taskforce makes recommendations
The UK’s Insurance Fraud Taskforce – of which the British Insurance Brokers’ Association (BIBA), along with various other industry figures, is a member – was launched in January last year, and after 12 months of ‘valuable research and ground-breaking dialogue’, according to Economic Secretary to the Treasury Harriett Baldwin MP (Member of Parliament), it recently released its recommendations for both the UK government and the wider industry. Baldwin announced the recommendations at a parliamentary reception on 18 January, saying that ‘these recommendations will galvanise our collective efforts to tackle insurance fraud, and will ultimately reduce costs for consumers’.
Three of the Taskforce’s key recommendations were:
- For the government to review ways in which fraudulent, late claims can be discouraged via changes to court costs and evidence rules (for example directing older claims to the small claims process rather than the fast track process).
- Demanding that the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority (SRA) work with the claims management companies’ regulator to ‘properly and strongly enforce referral fee bans’, and ensure that organisations that are not currently regulated are brought into the fold.
- For the government to develop and deliver a ‘coherent regulatory strategy’ to clamp down on nuisance calls and texts, and thus reduce the amount of honest customers ‘being coerced into making spurious claims’.
BIBA’s executive director Graeme Trudgill commented: “For some years both the incidence and cost of insurance fraud have been increasing, with the impact being felt by honest customers. BIBA has included fraud-related calls for action in our manifestos for a number of years so we were keen to participate fully in the Taskforce and our 2016 Manifesto, #FairnessForAll, calls for its recommendations to be implemented. We are also pleased that the separate recommendations of the independent review of claims management regulation undertaken by Carol Brady have been referenced in the Taskforce recommendations as we believe stronger regulation and enforcement [are] key to helping reduce fraud.” Currently, insurance fraud is so prevalent that it adds approximately £50 to the annual insurance bill of every UK policyholder.