22% of home insurance customers exaggerate claims

A survey by Swinton Home Insurance of 1,200 online customers has found that 22% exaggerated a story in order to fulfill a claim.

37% of home insurance customers said they would exaggerate their story for a successful claim.

Swinton said it is continuing to use advanced techniques to catch out fraudsters, but added many false claims are very easy to detect.

For example, one man tried to claim for 'stolen' DVDs which had not yet been released in the UK.

Steve Chelton, insurance development manager at Swinton Home Insurance said: "We would like to reassure our honest customers that we are doing everything we can to put a stop to fraudulent insurance claims.

"The last thing we want see is honest customers being penalised through higher premiums. To those who do attempt to falsely claim, we warn that our system for detection is increasingly sophisticated and 'if caught, you risk future problems in obtaining any insurance cover as well as a criminal record."

Recent ABI figures uncovered an average 335 fraudulent insurance claims are made per day at a cost of £2.3m to the insurance industry.

Home insurance is the most common type of cover on which people commit fraud with around 170 false claims made each day.

The increased premiums add an extra £44 onto the average UK household's annual insurance bill.