RSA and CRIF reveal results of pet insurance fraud partnership

CRIF Decision Solutions and RSA Insurance have succeeded in detecting and reducing the cost of a range of fraudulent pet insurance claims.

Pet insurance fraud is carried out by a small minority of RSA customers, according to CRIF, a provider of fraud prevention, consumer profiling and decision management solutions, but the types undertaken are subtle and difficult to track.

They include the non-disclosure of prior claims history in order to influence premium, misrepresenting the breed of pets to avoid associated risk factors or prior claims history, and attempts to upgrade policies to access increased cover limits in order to accommodate ongoing conditions.

RSA is using CRIF’s pet insurance solutions to combat these types of fraud, by integrating data from multiple external sources to inform product development and risk appetite.

CRIF’s Radar, for example, is a means of streamlining risk assessment to inform policy pricing, while the centralised pet claims database to which over half of pet insurance providers including RSA are currently committed, CACHE Pet, tracks claim anomalies, serial claimants, pre-existing conditions, non-disclosure and misrepresentation of information.

It is the collection and sharing of data that RSA and CRIF argue will help insurers to tackle pet insurance fraud on a large scale. 

Adele Sumner, head of counter fraud and financial crime at RSA, commented: “The sharing of claims data for the purposes of the prevention and detection of insurance fraud is a principle that has been in place for over thirty years. This method is vital to deter unscrupulous fraudsters from cycling through insurance companies and making fraudulent claims.” 

“For example, we have investigated multiple instances of fake documentation being presented to multiple different insurers, and even some cases where pets were reported as lost when they are actually safe at home.”

Sumner continued: “Fraudsters will look for opportunities across insurance products, so it is important that the industry puts measures in place to detect and deter fraud across our risks, rather than only focusing on areas where it might be more common.” 

“It is vital that we invest in the sharing of pet claims data to ensure fraudsters are detected and managed—this is becoming increasingly important as insurers increasingly adopt digital claim journeys.”

Sara Costantini, director at CRIF, added: “We are working to help insurers bring added value to the pet insurance proposition by making it customer centric, competitive and easily accessible. Our portfolio of products continues to develop and the introduction of pet tech wearables providing enriched data sources offers exciting possibilities.”

Mark Dugdale