Staged Claims Require Zero Tolerance

In a presentation to the House of Commons, the Transport Select Committee cited several reasons explaining the rising costs of car insurance, but none of these make it easy to attribute ‘blame’ to any one sector.

The committee stated that the increased in organised crime syndicates committing motor car insurance fraud is making a substantial impact on the average cost of an insurance policy. According to the findings of some experts, £44 per policy sold in the UK will go towards the thousands of pounds worth of compensation paid as a result of ‘staged’ car accidents. Historically this was more common in urban areas, but as post code checks on claimants became more widely used, the crime has spread across the country as the operators regularly move to avoid detection. Moneysupermarket.com found that 5% of drivers under 35 – or a substantial one in every twenty – had deliberately braked to cause the car behind to crash into them, making the other party liable for the cost of damage!