Background

Our first notification of this incident came via a Claim Notification Form from a claimant alleging that the policyholder’s vehicle had pulled out from a side road and collided with his car. The claimant stated that he had sustained several injuries and submitted a total loss claim for vehicle damage valued at just over £15,000, along with a credit hire claim approaching £10,000.

The claims team immediately contacted the named policyholder, who categorically denied any involvement in the incident, ownership of the vehicle in question, or having ever taken out a policy. Our insurer client then confirmed that the policy had been set up using stolen identification and had been cancelled shortly after inception.

Given these serious irregularities, the case was swiftly referred to our Special Investigations Unit (SIU) for further investigation.

How we helped

The SIU carried out extensive intelligence checks which uncovered a range of suspicious factors:

1. The claimant had a history of multiple previous claims.
2. He also possessed a criminal record and had been a director of several dissolved companies.
3. The supposed policyholder’s vehicle had expired tax and MOT, which called into question whether it could even have been on the road at the time of the alleged collision.

The SIU recognised these bits of information as indicators of a potentially contrived claim, and instructed GBB, Davies’ independent research and forensic investigations company, to conduct a forensic examination of the claimant’s vehicle. The resulting expert report was pivotal to the case, confirming that the vehicle’s damage pattern was consistent with impact from a post or pole, not another vehicle.

This forensic evidence in combination with the intelligence findings led to the conclusion that the incident had never happened as it had been reported. The fraudsters had taken out a policy using stolen personal details, then attempted to use it to claim for pre-existing vehicle damage.

Outcome

The claim was repudiated in full, and no further correspondence was received from the claimant or any associated parties. Our insurer client achieved an immediate saving of £28,0000, avoiding payment of the fraudulent damage, false injury claims and credit hire claims.

The positive outcome of this case was made possible by the seamless integration of teams across Davies – the claims team received the claim and acted quickly to report the unusual circumstances, while GBB provided in-depth independent forensic analysis that helped to definitively dismiss the possibility of this collision happening.

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