Insurance quote news
24/01/2011
Police chief warns on cheapest car insurance rise
One of the difficulties in finding the cheapest car insurance is that fraudulent claims are being linked to organised crime, a senior policeman has told Members of Parliament.
Chief Superintendent Geraint Anwyl, of the Association of Chief Police Officers' roads policing section, told the Commons Transport Committee that some gangs were even setting up claims management companies where the supposed doctor, solicitor and car crash victim could be members of the same crime ‘family'.
He said the plots to defraud insurance companies, which included staged and fake car accidents, were difficult to detect because they were occurring all over the UK.
Dubbed ‘crash for cash claims', the frauds are particularly prevalent in the Birmingham area and in the North West where some legitimate motorists are penalised with a higher insurance quote because of their postcode and the district's car accident record.
The Road Safety Minister Mike Penning said that he thought the car insurance industry could do more to combat the frauds but acknowledged that staged accidents were difficult to prove.
The Insurance Fraud Bureau estimates that about 30,000 crashes in 2010 could have been faked at an average claim cost of £17,000.
Insurance premiums for responsible motorists are continuing to rise, even for the cheapest car insurance, with an average of £30 out of each annual payment being used to cover road traffic accidents involving uninsured drivers or those who leave the scene of an accident and can't be found.