Insurance fraud? (Published 30/03/06)

We often read stories in the papers about how the finance industry is introducing some new initiative or other designed to combat fraud, or just making a noise about the subject in general. I always tend to be a bit sceptical about this sort of thing, if not downright cynical. This is because my experience of my work over the years for clients has led me to the conclusion that it is the finance companies themselves that are the biggest fraudsters of the lot.

I have lost count of the number of times an ordinary member of the public has consulted us about an offer of compensation from an insurance company, for example, only for us to discover that they are being offered far less than what they should be getting. £200 or so is not untypical for injuries that should result in ten times as much.

It is beyond any question in my view that insurance companies and the like play on the ignorance of those ordinary decent members of the public who are quite straightforward and come to them quite plainly thinking 'I don't need a solicitor its all very straightforward'. It worries me that the ones that do come to us for advice are probably just the tip of the iceberg.

Low offers are not the end of it however. I have noticed a growing tendency over the years for insurance companies to misrepresent their products. There are the so-called redundancy & accident protection policies for example, so often slipped in and sold as an add-on, which just as often turn out to be not worth the paper they are written on. Then there are misrepresentations about the scope of the policy when you make a claim. 'This is not covered' is often the stance of the insurers when a glance at the policy by a properly experienced eye can show that it is. Then if they have to pay they make it their business to reduce the payment as much as possible by fair means or foul. So cynical has the insurance business become that we are now routinely coming across open allegations of fraud just as a tactic to harass and put off quite genuine claimants.

It all seems such a long way from the friendly insurance man of old who would come to your door with a cheery hello and collect your premiums and enquire after your health. That’s why whenever you deal with an insurance company you need someone on your side who knows as much about it as they do. That's what we at Wilsons are here for. We're on your side!

I had a lady in the office the other day telling me about how her husband had died earlier in the year. Apparently, he had been taken into hospital with a not particularly serious ailment and whilst there managed to contract one that killed him. Apparently, somebody had stuck a tube into him that was not as clean as it should have been and one thing led to another and before we knew it the poor chap was dead. Subsequently, she has been asking various people at the hospital what exactly went on and in the process has discovered a very interesting fact, which is that absolutely everybody in the hospital that she asks about the subject gives her exactly the same answer. Not just, I hasten to add, the gist of exactly the same answer but precisely the same answer, word for word, parrot fashion. It really is an amazing coincidence. Except, of course, that it isn’t a coincidence at all; it’s just the way ‘customers’ get looked after nowadays.

The problem that this lady had was that she didn’t really have any complaint that was capable of being valued in money. Her husband was an old man and not very well, which is why he went into hospital in the first place. Financially, the family could hardly complain that they had lost a breadwinner or anything of that nature. So from a financial point of view any sort of complaint is a dead loss, and this wonderful edifice of a legal system that we have created for ourselves regards that as being the end of the story. Justice, right and wrong and all the rest of it doesn’t get a look in. We cannot sue somebody for an apology, much less an explanation, unless, by happy coincidence, there’s lots of money in it as well.

The good news is though that there is more than one way from A to B. That’s what Wilsons is here for, to guide you through the maze to get you where you want to be without being fobbed off by the system! Seven days a week.