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Our years of working as experts in the psychology of deception and attitudes to fraud has shown that consumers will defraud their insurer if they think that they can ‘get away with it’. We agree that encouraging honesty will have an effect on levels of fraud, and also that declarations of honesty should be at the beginning of forms to make people think about the consequences of supplying false information before they supply it. This needs to be made clear in processes from the outset.

However, although putting an honesty clause on a claims form may go some way to deter opportunists, it doesn’t go far enough. This measure needs to be implemented in conjunction with other fraud detection methods, and one of the best ways of detecting fraudulent behaviour is talking to the customer. With the right training it can be easy to catch people out simply by listening to their behaviour and what they are saying and asking the right questions in the right way. You can still give customers an opportunity to withdraw their claim if something doesn’t quite add up, and it also helps to deter the opportunist from trying again in the future.