The Association of British Insurers (ABI) has launched a briefing paper on insurance fraud that estimates more than £1bn worth of fraudulent claims are submitted to insurers each year in personal lines.
Based on industry data sharing and claims handling techniques, this accounts for 10% of the total value of personal motor claims and 15% of household claims.
The briefing note also contains an attitude survey, commissioned by Royal & SunAlliance, which revealed that 69% of the 2,000 surveyed would make a dishonest claim if they thought they could get away with it. And 46% thought most people inflated the value of a claim by at least one third.
The ABI said it was attempting to target fraudsters more intensively through greater pooling of resources and expertise, developing a bespoke single industry-wide anti-fraud database and stepping up liaisons with the government and the police.
The ABI's anti-fraud committee chairman David Neave said: "Honest policyholders should be reassured that we are turning up the heat on insurance cheats."
