Insurance: UK car insurers in Mr Macawber complex
Dicken's Mr Micawber famously said "income twenty pounds, expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and sixpence, result: happiness; income twenty pounds, expenditure twenty pounds and six pence, result: misery." A report in the UK says that UK motor insurers are in misery. And much of it is due to fraud.
Britain's AA, says that in the past three months, and despite wall to wall television advertising promoting cut-price deals, the cost of comprehensive insurance in the UK has risen by more than 11%.
And in the past year, it says, the average annual premium has risen some 30% from GBP503 to GBP704.
According in EMB, which analyses insurance industry data, for every pound in premium income taken in the UK in the past year, more as much as GBP1.20 has been paid out in claims and suffered in costs.
Some of this, says the AA, is due to increased costs of repairs, some to new forms of insurance but a large slice is due to fraud.
The Association of British Insurers says that its members found fraud of more than GBP400 million in the past year as a range of conduct including deliberate crashes, fake thefts and false claims for theft from cars takes its toll.
Figures released today say that the BBC alone lost more than GBP240,000 of laptops, phones and other things in 2009 - some of which have been reported as stolen from cars. Whilst the BBC employees are not alleged to be making false claims, the figure demonstrates how much loss and theft is present in the corporate sector - and the temptation to make a claim to cover up an otherwise innocent mishap.
But its the lies that build up the costs: confused.com's survey of attitudes says that more than 45% of male drivers admitted making false statements in proposals or claims.
But some frauds are on the "revenue" side: parents pretending they are the primary car user so as to gain lower premiums for their children, so distorting income for companies even where claims are not made.
Download PDF version of this page