Insurance experts agree that the pandemic and its related economic hardships will continue to encourage opportunistic fraud. “When times are tough economically, financial struggle can bring individuals and companies to act in a desperate manner,” notes Jeff Manricks at Shift Technology, adding that struggling policyholders may be tempted to “optimise” their costs by filing fraudulent claims. He notes that the past two years have seen an increased frequency of fire and flood claims in commercial buildings and opportunistic building/contents claims in personal lines. “We anticipate that the economic uncertainty will bring more and more policyholders to either exaggerate the consequences of a real loss or even fake a loss to get an undue reimbursement,” he says.
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