Southampton fraud ring foiled

A fraud ring valued at more than £140,000 has been blocked by AXA Commercial Lines and Personal Intermediary. Operation Flower was launched in August 2014 after nine claims in the Southampton area were highlighted with the same commonalities including:

• Each accident involved the policyholder, driving a commercial vehicle, pulling out of a side road and colliding with the third party vehicle
• Once the policyholder readily accepted liability, no further contact could be made
• The third party vehicles had a pre-accident value in excess of £4,000
• All accidents occurred within weeks of policy inception
• All the third parties resided in the Southampton area

An investigation was undertaken which sought to locate the policyholders and obtain engineering evidence to support the claims, however, the results supported the view that the accidents had been contrived. All of the claims were repudiated as a result. Intelligence searches confirmed that this cluster of fraudulent claims was perpetrated by the same gang that had targeted another large insurer, with a similar group of contrived accidents.

Keoghs’ fraud ring team acted on behalf of AXA to repudiate eight of the claims submitted. Ruth Needham, Keoghs’ director of fraud rings commented:

“This result once again shows the importance of having a collaborative approach within the industry when tackling fraudulent claims. Promoting success like this helps to reinforce the message that insurers will not stand for this type of fraudulent activity.”