How To Uncover Automobile Insurance Fraud

Clever or deceitful, regardless of how you see it, nobody likes to be a victim of fraud. Unfortunately, we’re all prone to be victimized regardless of the possibility that we never come across someone who’s compromising to make a buck. Fraud is a crime because it typically means that you are taking something that you are not legally entitled to. Auto Insurance, fraud is on the rise especially here in Singapore, and it is affecting almost every driver, whether they are aware of it or they aren’t. Singapore is a green-field for possible auto insurance fraud, and even if you might not be directly involved, the fact that it is widely spread leads to increased premium costs and longer waits of claims to be processed.

Before we look on how to uncover an automobile insurance fraud, let’s have a brief how it occurs.
How Automobile Insurance fraud occurs.
Auto insurance fraud is an attempt to cheap an insurance company with a purpose of getting paid. It can be attempted by the policyholder, by another driver, the repair person or a medical professional. Typically, auto insurance, fraud is classified into two, i.e. hard fraud or soft fraud.

Hard fraud is a situation when someone intentionally causes an accident, allowing him to file a claim. Take an example of two drivers who stages a car accident. The first one drives ahead of you and the second one behind you. The one ahead of you slows down while the one behind you do not allow you to slow down, so there is a chance you will crash on the one ahead of you when you are concentrating on the one behind you. Now, you become accused of injury of the one ahead of you, and the insurance company has to pay for the damage that will ultimately increase your premiums.

The soft fraud occurs when someone files a legitimate claim, but it’s somehow distorted in a way that will inflate money/claim paid by the insurance company. This happens when someone claims that there more car damages that were done, than what occurred in the real sense, or when there is a claim that an injury happened during an accident while the injury was actually present before the accident. There are many more situations that qualify to be an insurance fraud; this is just an overview of how it can indirectly affect you.


So, How To Uncover Automobile Insurance, Fraud? Here are few tips that might be helpful.
1. Research Claim History
The claim history is the best way to know whether you are dealing with professionals’ scammer or not. However, there are chances that those who commit claim are smart enough not to file a claim under the same name or with the same insurance company. So, it is important to research the claimant’s previous residences more than you will on the current one. To get the complete information about someone claim, you may need to utilise information system that compiles all the claims from all or multiple insurance providers. If you do that, there are many chances that you are going to uncover an insurance fraud, if any.

2. Look beyond the claimant claim History
One thing about criminals is there are not always careful enough; they have the attitude of I do not care’. For this reason, there are chances that they will leave traces in their social media profiles. For instance, the claimant files a legitimate claim, but distorts information regarding injuries, there are chances you will find some prove of existing injuries before the accident by looking at their social media timelines. People tend to put out incriminating updates of how they got injuries, how they are facing a challenge after and such kind of things. So, have an open mind, and there are chances that you will be able to to uncover an insurance fraud attempt through claimant social medias.

3. Be prepared
They say that ‘prevention is better than cure’. This applies when you are involved in any accidents. If an accident will cause you or your insurance company to be responsible for another car damages and repairs, it is important you record the events that happened during the accident. You can record a video and take photograph of everything that happened in the course of the accidents and immediately after the accident. This is important because there are chances that if someone was attempting to commit fraud, they might decide to opt away, or you can use the information uncover the attempt of fraud.

4. Verify Damages provided by the claimant
Before you forward the quotes supplied by the claimant always verify the estimate through their repair company as well as your repair company. When verifying from the claimant repair company, make sure you ask whether the damages seen on the vehicle actually happened during the accident, or there are signs that they might have happened before the accident.
The same happen with the injuries on the claimant. Get the record from the medical professional and verify!

5. Get the help of a private investigator
You might not be able to do research on the claimant history, or have time to investigate on his social media timelines or what is needed to uncover a possible insurance, fraud. So the only best way to uncover an auto insurance fraud is to hire an insurance fraud private investigator. These are experts at weeding a false claim that will bring a solid case to the judge if the case goes to the court.

However, you need to make sure you get the best private investigator; one who has resources, specialised techniques and the technologies that will stop a possible insurance fraud.

Some additional strategies can help you against auto insurance fraud includes; taking notes of exactly what happened, where it happened, calling the police so that you can protect yourself against perpetrators of fraud who might destroy their car further to inflate the claim. Also, be keen, on the good Samaritan who offers to help you in the accident scenes and advising you to use a particular service provider. Some of these people are just perpetrators of fraud.