The document fraud vulnerability in insurance validation processes
2-minute read time
For insurers, it comes as no surprise that AI has made it easier to produce huge volumes of passable fake documents. But new evidence suggests AI is testing insurer fraud defences in more unexpected ways.
To understand how this is playing out in practice, we teamed up with Insurance Post to ask fraud leaders from Zurich, Admiral and DAC Beachcroft what they’re seeing, how offenders are adapting, and where current controls are being tested.
Once concentrated largely at claims stage, the use of quality fake documents is climbing rapidly at earlier points in the customer journey.
Synectics’ National SIRA intelligence (which is shared by the UK’s largest insurers) has tracked a 31% increase in document fraud targeting policy stage controls in the last 12 months alone.
But the bigger concern for fraud teams is how those documents are being used.
We’re frequently seeing AI-generated fake documents appear in organised MOs designed to manipulate validation processes. Fraudsters deliberately fail frontline checks, in the hope of triggering an alternative pathway that still requires documentation, but is subject to lesser scrutiny or manual checks.
Other insurance fraudsters are responding to document analysis technology itself, including printing manipulated documents before rescanning or photographing them – rendering today’s forensic analysis largely unreliable.
Insurance fraud teams face a reality whereby understanding whether an individual document has been manipulated is no real understanding at all.
Reuse histories, behaviour and connections across organisations and sectors can provide the context needed to identify a fraud MO, while reviewing how customer touchpoints intersect can flag gaps vulnerable to exploitation by the well-informed fraudster.
And Zurich, Admiral and DAC Beachcroft agree. Read their thoughts, in their own words, over on Insurance Post.
