How Insurance Fraud And Forensics Is Affecting Your Rates

Posted on Sep 20 2019 - 8:05am by Editorial Staff

Car insurance, life insurance policies, healthcare coverage, and other insurance products cost consumers varying (though usually high) amounts of money. Even if two very similar people request a quote for identical insurance products, they could still end up paying wildly varying amounts. So, just how closely is insurance fraud related to the amount of money you pay for insurance? There are a couple of different elements to the answer to this question.

How Insurance Companies Are Getting Better at Sniffing Out Fraud

While you might not be able to understand how insurance fraud works or why anyone would ever want to take that kind of chance, insurance fraud is a multi-billion-dollar criminal industry. According to the FBI, billions of dollars are lost to insurance fraud annually. This means that you might be paying a couple of extra dollars or even into the double digits for each of your insurance policies every single month. Insurance companies are now relying on tools such as digital computer forensics to suss out suspected cases of fraud. Computer forensics might actually be the most powerful tool used by insurance companies to help locate fraud and keep their customers’ insurance rates from rising.

Why Computer Forensics is the Key

Consider how computers and other digital devices are normally used nowadays. You might send an email to your boss to let them know that you’ll be late coming in to work, call your kid’s school while in transit, and check your bank account balance all from your cell phone. An insurance forensic investigator knows that cell phones and personal computers are likely the critical sources of information in an insurance fraud investigation. Not only are individual cases of fraud being found out via computer forensics, but entire insurance fraud syndicates and schemes are being discovered this way.

Where You Will Notice a Difference in Insurance Rates

If you have ever seen your insurance rates going up despite nothing in your life changing, you might be experiencing the impact of insurance fraud. Any insurance claim submitted for the purpose of suspected fraud is investigated differently. While insurance claims investigated by an insurance forensic investigator at Secure Forensics are analyzed for all traces of suspected wrongdoing, consumers are most highly affected if they fall into a handful of specific categories. Those living in high crime areas, where there might be a lot of car thefts and reports of vandalism, can see rates go up and down much more sharply. Those who live in metropolitan areas might be more heavily impacted, too. In short, consumers who see products like car insurance going up year after year might reside in areas where insurance fraud is rampant. If you notice, your insurance provider is likely already at work on a resolution. Computer forensics is a regularly relied upon tool used by insurance fraud investigators to prove that a fraudulent claim was purposefully submitted. The more cases of suspected fraud that are caught via computer forensics, the lower your insurance rates are going to be. As computer forensics improves, you might see even more major changes in the way insurance rates quotes are given.

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Editorial Staff at I2Mag is a team of subject experts.