Impounded Car Insurance – Fraudulent drivers adding £50 to average policy
There was an uncovered average of 3,475 cases per week made by motorists who were lying somewhere on their applications for seized car insurance or who deliberately leaving relevant information off them. The ABI registered 180,675 attempts to make fraudulent applications for car insurance last year in the hope of acquiring a cheaper bill.
The most common among these cases revolved around drivers pretending their “no claims bonus” was longer than it really was, or even attempting to hide away any past criminal convictions. Some were found to give a false name or lying about their place of residence so that they could pretend their car was being kept in an area that suffered from less crime.
Many other fraudulent applications were involved with fronting, an act where someone, such as a parent for example, pretends that they’re the main driver of the car so that it will be less expensive in comparison to their child being rightfully named the main driver. In a fairly serious case, one applicant was jailed for three years once they were unable to disclose four previous claims they’d made and an unspent motoring conviction.
The industry now believes that almost as many as one in five policy holders under-declares the number of motoring convictions that they have, the ABI hoping that a new data sharing programme, MyLicence, will now enable to industry to obtain better information about their applicants from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) so that they can start to bring down the costs to every motorist. It’s believed that forcing any driver to reveal their 16-character driving licence number would weaken their ability to give false or misleading details in the future, saving any honest customers around £15 a year.
Due to other industry reforms, it’s believed that the average cost of comprehensive cover was seen to fall by 19.3% to £504 in the year to June, according to figures gathered by AA Insurance.
