OREANDA-NEWS. On 02 March 2009 was announced, that to ensure regular inspection of insurance compensations validity and to prevent fraud Ingosstrakh specialists maintained constant and comprehensive control over the review of materials on incidents declared by their individual and corporate clients as loss events, including investigation of 3 782 of severe losses throughout 2008. These measures allowed to identify insurants’ unfair practices in 710 cases. In each of these cases insurance payments were denied or terminated. In particular, Ingosstrakh experts managed to prevent the unjustified payment on an especially large scale by its Kaliningrad Branch. A local businessman received loans against equipment pledging from a number of banks, for which purposes the businessman submitted false Ingosstrakh insurance policies to the loan institutions. In April 2008 Ingosstrakh received three letters from one of the banks containing claims totaling RUR582 mln. The analysis of the policies revealed inconsistent facts confirming that the bank was provided with false policies. Unfortunately, specialists of the credit institution failed to verify the authenticity of the policies and to contact Ingosstrakh’s office prior to the loan accommodation. The Criminal case initiated against the given businessman in connection with the theft of bank’s monetary funds was recommitted to the court, and other details of the theft are currently investigated.

Apart from the above described sort of verification, the company on a regular basis implements measures to recover overdue debts and earlier stolen cash. Thus, in the past year the company managed to return RUR 100 mln. 141 earlier stolen vehicles were found and returned.

The law enforcement agencies received materials on 44 losses with clear signs of insurance fraud subject to criminal proceedings. Guilty verdicts were passed in 9 cases.

In total, Ingosstrakh specialists recovered over RUR 1 bln. in the past year including unjustified compensations and payments. 

Such results were achieved due to the coordinated work of various subdivisions of the companies involved in loss settlement. The company introduced regulations on the cooperation of these departments and administrations. Besides, Ingosstrakh’s extensive statistics allowed to identify top priority factors pointing to the signs of insurance fraud in loss settlement. In which case various types of insurance were assigned unique characteristics: 17 items for voluntary vehicle insurance, 12 items for MOTPL, 14 items for property and mortgage insurance, etc. At the same time the system introduced is not limited by the exhaustive list of potential fraud signs. Employees responsible for loss review have been given an opportunity to take an individual approach to a certain insurance case and deciding on the feasibility of a detailed study of circumstances and need for their investigation.

Alexander Gulyaev, Director of Data Analysis and Security Department at Ingosstrakh, IJSC, claims that automobile insurance is undoubtedly the most criminal  area of insurance business. A huge number of sales points, corrupt nature of certain members of the Internal Affairs agencies deeming certain accidents insurance events involving vehicle theft or damage, difficulties associated with ensuring control, relatively high cost of revision, loopholes in the Criminal Code  - all these factors create a favorable environment for fraud.

The most popular criminal schemes include double insurance followed by an attempt to obtain compensation from both insurers; “planned” road-traffic accidents; backdated insurance, simulation of accidents and theft of insured property; declaration of “old” damages from the previous insurance event; arson; exaggeration of actual damage caused by fire or other natural disasters; replacement of a person being the actual party guilty of the road-traffic accident. Another type of fraud that has become popular recently is insurance of false leasing transactions as well as attempts to cheat insurers under warehouse and trade inventory insurance contracts with subsequent declaration of “loss” events and claim of compensation, says Alexander Gulyaev.

In the midst of financial and economic crises incidents of insurance fraud tend to grow. That is why Ingosstrakh has developed and is currently implementing an additional set of measures aimed at preventing such events and ensuring solid protection of interests of the company, its clients and partners.