Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB)

In 2006, British insurers set up the Insurance Fraud Bureau, a not-for-profit body funded by the market, with a narrow brief: spot the organized fraud rings that no single company can see on its own. The IFB pools its members' claims data, looks for links between vehicles, addresses, phone numbers, garages and claims management firms, then builds cases that it passes to the police, first of all to the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department of the City of London Police. Crash for cash was its first battleground and still accounts for a good share of its work. It also runs a confidential reporting line open to the public, the Cheatline. The Insurance Fraud Register is the other tool, and the more sensitive one. It is a shared register of people against whom a member insurer has established fraud, under evidential criteria set by the register's rules, and companies check it at underwriting as well as at claim. It is about individuals, whereas claims databases such as the Claims and Underwriting Exchange are about events. A listing weighs heavily on access to insurance for as long as it lasts, hence the rights of access and challenge that data protection law gives the people concerned. Underwriters who use it know that it only sees proven fraud, and therefore a fraction of cases, and that it replaces neither the fraud score nor the in-house network analysis. For a French observer, the point of interest is mainly the set-up: pooled funding and a named register shared between competitors, backed by a dedicated police unit, which France has not put together.