The short-term insurance industry, under the auspices of the South African Insurance Association (SAIA), is escalating its fight against insurance fraud.
An Insurance Crime Bureau (ICB) is currently being established in an effort to address insurance fraud, and especially organized insurance fraud.
The first ICB board meeting took place yesterday, 20 May 2008, in Johannesburg. The ICB Board consists of high level representatives of the founder members, as well as the CEO of SAIA Mr Barry Scott.
The founder members are Zurich, Santam, Mutual & Federal, FirstRand STI, Hollard, the Telesure Group, ABSA Insurance Company, Lion of Africa, Regent and Standard Insurance.
Many important issues were discussed at this, the inaugural Board meeting of the ICB Board, including the election of the ICB Board Chair.
The Board unanimously voted that Mr Servaas du Plessis, from the FirstRand STI Group representing OUTsurance and Momentum STI, should take up position as the ICB's first Chair of the Board.
Mr Du Plessis has been a key person in the process leading up to the decision made to go ahead and establish the Insurance Crime Bureau.
He was part of the Task Team that investigated similar operations internationally, together with Mr Gerald Davis from Mutual & Federal and Ms Viviene Pearson from SAIA.
"The South African Insurance Association is excited about the establishment of the Insurance Crime Bureau. Insurance fraud costs the short-term insurance industry a lot of money annually, which obviously also impacts on the cost of insurance.
"Although the ICB will become a truly independent company, run by its own members, the SAIA will always remain close to this important initiative, said Mr Barry Scott CEO of SAIA, after the inaugural ICB Board meeting.
He added that the SAIA has been involved in several crime fighting initiatives in the past few years, including in the Big Business Workgroup, the National Vehicle Crime Fighting Project managed by Business Against Crime South Africa, and a detective training project for 500 detectives in Gauteng, amongst other projects. The SAIA, on behalf of the short-term insurance industry, also donates an annual amount in excess of a million Rand to Business Against Crime SA.
Mr Servaas du Plessis, newly elected first Chair of the ICB Board, said in Johannesburg yesterday that the objective of the Insurance Crime Bureau is to address insurance fraud in an organized and holistic way, using an intelligence driven system that could detect patterns in existing industry data.
"The ICB will investigate organized insurance fraud, together with the insurance companies involved as well as the relevant law enforcement entities," he stated.
The Insurance Crime Bureau will leverage existing shared data to detect organised fraud, develop an investigative approach to managing fraud events impacting multiple insurers, and provide a platform to improve the governance over the management of shared insurance data, driving short and long term cost savings.
26 May 2008
The short-term insurance industry, under the auspices of the South African Insurance Association (SAIA), is escalating its fight against insurance fraud.