The War on Staged Collisions

In February, Ontarians learned of a police officer in the province's Peel Region who had just been convicted of participating in an organized auto insurance fraud ring. The officer had been providing accident reports to make staged collisions look like real collisions, resulting in more than $1 million in fraudulent claims being paid out. With help from governments, police and prosecutors, industry stakeholders need to be increasingly diligent and organized in identifying and shutting down these ever-evolving rings. In the area of consumer education, Insurance Bureau of Canada released the SafetyMobile app to help drivers recognize some of the different types of staged collisions so that they can help to detect and report these crimes. Another positive development in the fraud fight came earlier this month with the launch of CANATICS. CANATICS uses a sophisticated data analytics tool to look at pooled industry data and make connections and linkages about unusual behaviour that individual insurers cannot make on their own.