One broker is cancelling 190 policies a week due to ghost broking applications flooding in. Covea head of financial crime Steve Jackson said he was told that by a broker in what he labels a ‘large and growing problem’. If each of these involves an average loss of £1,000, that works out at around £10m per annum from just one intermediary, he estimates. Ghost broking is when a trickster pretends to be an insurance broker, sometimes through sophisicated websites, sending out fake policies and then fleeing with customer’s premium money. Chris Hallett, insurance product manager at Synectics, says the company’s data matching service SIRA has seen a 600% increase in the number of cases marked as impersonation fraud in its database over the last year. “All the main insurers are talking about ghost broking as one of their main concerns,” says detective chief inspector Andy Fyfe, head of the City of London Police’s Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department (IFED). Subscribers read more To read the full story on the growing menace of ghost broking click here
Incidents of so - called insurance " ghost broking " have increased by 600 % in the past year , according to Synectics . The practice involves online insurance " ghosts " sending out fraudulent policies and keep missing payments . Some observers say the practice could result in money being lost every year , and should be of concern to all the main insurers .