Fraudsters began to value life

The share of fraudulent actions of customers in auto insurance has decreased compared to the previous year, and this mainly affected the Casco segment. According to experts, the constant prevention of such cases gradually reduces their attractiveness to criminals. However, they switch to more profitable types – property and life insurance, in which expertise and practice are much weaker.

The total volume of fraudulent activities in insurance has decreased compared to the previous year.

According to the All-Russian Union of Insurers, in the first nine months of 2022, insurance companies submitted more than 6.1 thousand applications to law enforcement agencies for 3 billion rubles.

For the same period last year, almost 7.2 thousand applications were submitted for the amount of more than 3.7 billion rubles. However, the structure of fraud, according to insurers, has undergone some changes. And if the share of claims under OSAGO policies remained at the level of the previous year – 57% (but in volume it decreased to 1.7 billion rubles), then the share of hull insurance significantly decreased – by 5 p.p., to 17% (to 0.5 billion rubles). The share of fraud in the property insurance segment increased by 2 percentage points to 20% (RUB 0.6 billion). Life insurance remained at 3% (RUB 0.1 billion).

According to experts, fraudulent auto insurance schemes include imitation of theft of insured vehicles, traffic accidents with subsequent application for insurance payment under OSAGO or Casco, falsification of the results of a technical examination after a traffic accident (see “Kommersant” dated August 9). The average amount for fraudulent cases in OSAGO is estimated at slightly more than 300 thousand rubles, and in hull insurance – about 1.2 million rubles.

As Aleksey Yanin, Managing Director for Ratings of Insurance and Investment Companies at Expert RA, notes, insurers have been working on counteracting fraudsters in auto insurance for many years, which leads to a decrease in potential benefits and an increase in the complexity of fraudulent operations and, accordingly, gradually reduces their attractiveness to criminals. In addition, says Igor Fatyanov, CEO of Zetta Insurance, in auto insurance, companies are striving for in-kind compensation for losses, partly due to the growing interest of fraudsters in personal types of insurance, since they allow them to directly go to cash payments.

Therefore, scammers are gradually switching to other types of insurance – life (average bill about 700 thousand rubles) and property (5 million rubles).

Dmitry Gorbunov, a partner at the law firm Rustam Kurmaev & Partners, notes that the issue of digitalization in the field of traffic and transport accounting makes it necessary to switch to less transparent insured events that are more difficult to identify at the moment. In addition, according to Alexei Yanin, in life insurance and against accidents and illnesses, especially in mortgage insurance, we can talk about larger sums of money. He notes that in property insurance, the increase in fraudulent cases may be due to the fact that in the event of losses in a business, if it is close to collapse, entrepreneurs in a difficult situation may be tempted to solve their problems through fire insurance.

According to Alexander Tsyganov, a professor at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, the number of fraudulent activities in life insurance can be much higher, since in this segment it is very difficult to prove the insured’s intentional injury to himself. Aleksey Yanin clarifies that in life insurance, the fraud mechanism is based either on obtaining certain medical diagnoses necessary for insurance payments, filing a fictitious disability through appropriate medical mechanisms, or generally through obtaining fake or illegally issued death certificates of insured persons.

Experts believe that scammers will continue to shift their focus to non-motor insurance in 2023.

Tatyana Nikitina, Senior Director of NRA Financial Companies Ratings, believes that the higher average payment for disability and death compared to OSAGO, as well as less experience of insurers in investigating fraudulent activities in this segment, contribute to the growth of fraudsters’ interest in it. Mr. Fatyanov notes that the growth of illegal actions in personal insurance is also associated with insufficient information exchange with government agencies.

Julia Poslavskaya, Polina Trifonova