Trace and Investigate solution: Ageas Insurance Limited Overview Company Ageas UK is an award winning UK insurance provider. Challenge To protect itself from false claims, Ageas needed to be able to quickly check the authenticity of the information people include on their motor and home insurance applications. Solution Ageas UK chose Etrace, offering the widest UK population data available to the market. How GBG helped Ageas Verifies applicants identities rapidly and accurately Avoids tens of thousands of pounds worth of claims fraud Enjoys instant ROI, covering ETrace s licence through postal and administration savings alone Searches across a library of over a billion reference files Has access to a unique database of consented email and phone contacts USING IDENTITY INTELLIGENTLY
Ageas Insurance tracks down insurance fraudsters with GBG s ETrace. The most successful organisations recognise the value of understanding individual identities. GBG combines individual identity data with technology to provide clients with the identity data intelligence they need to make good business decisions. That s why Ageas chose GBG s Etrace solution to help it stamp out insurance application and claims fraud. Etrace (now rebranded as GBG Connexus) allows customers to search for, investigate and contact individuals quickly and responsibly. ETrace gives you access to the widest and most current UK population data through a single interface with the fastest and most accurate individual validation, tracing and intelligence-gathering functionality. Background Ageas UK is a leading provider of award-winning insurance solutions in the UK. Ageas UK distributes its products, underwritten by Ageas Insurance Limited, through a range of channels including brokers, IFAs, intermediaries, affinity partners and the internet, as well as through its wholly or partially-owned companies trading as Ageas Retail and its brands which include Castle Cover, Cover Direct, Kwik Fit Insurance Services, and RIAS. Insuring around nine million customers and working with a range of partners, Ageas is recognised for delivering consistent and high-quality customer experiences. It employs around 6,000 people in offices across the UK. Like all insurers, Ageas grapples with the problem of fraud that cost the industry 1.3 billion in 2013 (ABI). Fraudulent motor insurance claims are the most common and expensive. Dishonest motor claims totalled 811 million in 2013, up 32% over 2012. Application fraud is also a growing problem, particularly in motor insurance. Individuals try to cut premiums by faking details, while criminal networks submit hundreds or even thousands of falsified applications. In one form of the widespread practice of ghost broking, gangs sell fake policies to unsuspecting drivers who then end up uninsured and out of pocket. Many criminals use bogus applications as the first step in making fraudulent claims. A lot of it is organised crime, but some are just chancers trying to save money on their insurance, says Paula Howett, Fraud and Risk Quality Manager at Ageas. Someone might say they are a 54-year-old woman living in Truro, but actually be an 18-year-old student in the centre of Birmingham. 1.6 million Ageas has over 1.6 million UK policyholders and writes an average of 8000 new policies every week 1.3 billion Insurance fraud cost the industry 1.3 billion in 2013. 811 million Fraudulent motor insurance claim totalled 811 million in 2013, up 32% over 2012.
The Challenge Finding a solution which was right for our business and which would fight fraud effectively. The Anti-Fraud Team that Howett leads started to combat application fraud in earnest in 2010. We wanted to introduce some tools to deal with fraud then but as application fraud was not a headline grabber, unlike cash for crash scams, we had to build a convincing business case. Today, Howett s team is 12-strong and completely dedicated to fighting application fraud. Ageas has a set of pre-sale customer checks in place, such as credit scoring, Anti-Money Laundering and residency verification based on the Electoral Roll (ER). Post-sale, the company matches details against the Claims and Underwriting Exchange (CUE) claims record database, helping to prevent multiple claims fraud and spot false claims histories. In 2011, Ageas started to compare new policies against a cross-industry database of individuals known to be fraud risks. If a new customer had previously had insurance voided or were dishonest about their claims record, the company could immediately cancel the policy. But fake names and addresses were harder to spot and deal with. Where the team suspected a new policyholder had falsified their address, age or other details, Ageas had to go through a slow and expensive paper-based process to verify their identity. Where there was no reply and Ageas decides to void their policy, the company has to give further written warning by registered post. That means they can be driving around for up to three weeks before we can cancel their policy, says Howett. Where possible, Ageas needed to identify fraudulent applications at the earliest opportunity up the verification process, the company turned to GBG. The Solution Verifying UK individuals quickly and accurately. Acquired by Ageas in 2012, Groupama was already a satisfied GBG client. We had good reports from them and we d also talked to other insurance fraud specialists at industry events, says Howett. GBG is seen as innovative and a market leader. GBG s ETrace searches across a library of reference files totaling over a billion records, including 21 years of the Edited ER. GBG s own unique sources add 52 million records over and above the ER. ETrace can track the movements of individuals over time, linking people from their last known address to a new address. After comparing Etrace to a competing product, Ageas ran a short pilot in December 2013 and signed up at the end of the year. Along with their colleagues in claims fraud, all 12 members of the Anti-Fraud Team now use the solution to fight application fraud in motor and home insurance. We did some initial face-to-face training and it didn t take long to get up to speed, says Howett. Everybody on the team says it is a quick, easy and efficient system to use. Howett points to ETrace s unique database of consented email and phone contacts as particularly useful in streamlining investigations. At over 100 million, GBG s consented telephone number database is the largest mobile phone database available in the UK, with realtime checks showing immediately whether a number is live or not. Some addresses are used by multiple fraudsters and we need to explain exactly what s going on to the homeowner, explains Howett. One elderly couple had piles of post coming through their letterbox from various insurance companies. ETrace gives you the contact details of the real resident at an address, so we can phone them to check if a name and address are valid or not. We are saving a lot of money that is passed onto honest customers via lower premiums.
The Benefits Instant ROI from postal and administration savings. With ETrace, we can check an address and can often void a policy immediately if the applicant s details are false, says Howett. It can save over 20 days of administration time, print, paper and postage. The system completely pays for itself that way, let alone any other savings. Any suspicious new applications are passed to the Anti-Fraud Team, whose practiced eyes detect anomalies in lists of new applicants from any channel. Why do all these applications come from the same postcode and why do they all have the same birthday and occupation? We now constantly use Etrace to find and verify people s addresses, age and other details, says Howett. As well as removing administration and postal costs, early intervention using ETrace helps Ageas reduce its claims risk exposure. As planning fake claims is often the reason for fraudulent applications, intervention using ETrace also helps Ageas forestall substantial amounts of claims fraud. But as the true risk of a claim is largely unknown, putting a number on what has been saved is challenging. If a fraudster takes out a policy and has an accident, we still have to pay out for any damage or injury claims, states Howett. It s clear that a very large sum of money indeed is being saved overall but unfortunately you can t prove a fraudulent applicant would go on to make a fraudulent claim. With ETrace, you can prove the customer is dishonest so it gives more concrete evidence, but it s still hard to know what the full risk would have been or the amount that has been saved. ETrace saves over 20 days of administration time, print, paper and postage. Data from 25 voided policies where Ageas was able to find out fraudsters true identities gives some indication of ROI. There, the average real premium would have been over 3000 rather than the average 300 actually paid. That s a tenfold difference. In those 25 cases alone, Ageas avoided premium fraud of at least 67,500. With these results showing the effectiveness of GBG s approach to identity verification, Ageas is now looking to deploy more of GBG s identity data intelligence solutions to help verify customers post-sale. GBG s ETrace product is extremely powerful and indispensable, says Howett. It provides enormous benefit to us, from front-end business to complex fraud investigation. It helps us take dangerous drivers off the road and saves a lot of money that we can pass onto honest customers via lower premiums. > ETrace enables rapid, accurate identity verification to fight insurance application and claims fraud. > Ageas covers ETrace s annual licence fee through savings on postal and administration costs alone. > At a minimum, ETrace prevents tens of thousands of pounds worth of application and claims fraud in motor and home insurance. > ETrace gives access to tens of millions of consented phone and email contacts, including the UK s largest mobile number database.
We can often quickly verify genuine customers, avoiding us the cost and the customer the worry of having to validate their information GBG products deployed: GBG Connexus uses a wide range of data sources to help customers trace and confirm identities quickly and easily and make decisions about suspicious people or activities Click here for more information. About GBG The most profitable organisations recognise the value of understanding the individual identity of their customers and employees. GBG combines this concept of identity with technology to create an environment of trust, so that organisations can employ people and connect, communicate and transact, safely and responsibly. We call this identity data intelligence. T +44 (0)8458 381000 E enquiries@gbgplc.com www.gbgplc.com @GBGplc