A U.K. company that helps uncover fraud is coming to Canada, and they are saving insurers millions with a simple conversation.
“We have saved the industry $64 million since 2004,” says Meera Bhatt, the director of VFM Services. “Our main area of expertise is insurance fraud; we have an ex-police contact in Canada who has been working with us, and has given us some insight into the Canadian market.”
The technique that VFM uses on behalf of insurers to weed out fraudulent claims is called Conversation Management, Bhatt told Insurance Business.
“Through a phone call, we can determine if there are any deceptive behaviours from the client making a claim,” she says. “For example, if something traumatic has happened, usually there is lots of emotional recall. People who have experienced a traumatic event will remember exactly what they did next.”
Those making fraudulent claims work from imagination, and will present rehearsed answers.
“It is parroting,” says Bhatt. “They will repeat everything back to you in exactly the same way – and they will do it a lot. The fraudster is working from imagination, and there is a lot of evasive behaviour.” (continued.)
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VFM is expanding into English-speaking countries, already opening an office in Australia, and classroom training in Canada anticipated to begin in the late fall.
“We are looking to make a couple of visits in one or two months,” says Bhatt. “It will be eight or 12 months until we would have some training for the first phase. Ideally we are looking to get the ball rolling at one of the big industry conferences in the fall, like the
IBAO conference in October.”
As yet, VFM doesn't have any immediate plans to open in the United States.
The current relationship with U.K. insurers is primarily as a back-up, a safety valve when large catastrophes strike – like the current spate of flooding claims that are inundating insurers in southeast England.
“We’ve been going through a lot of flooding claims,” says Bhatt, “and there are systems in place where the insurers automatically send those claims to us.”
What could easily become a Spanish Inquisition of clients who have legitimate claims is carefully avoided, Bhatt says, stating that the client should come away from the conversation appreciating that there are safeguards in place.
“We are looking for genuine customers, and only weeding out the fraudsters,” she says. “We reassure the client during the interview, and they do appreciate the questions.”
