Opinion: Is the new Labour government getting serious about insurance fraud?

After 14 years of Conservative political leadership in the UK, July 2024 ushered in a new era as incoming prime minister Keir Starmer and his band of Labour party officials assumed control of Westminster and the country.

While there has been much debate about what the new administration will or will not action now that it is in power – car insurance premiums, I’m looking at you here – Labour does seem to have laid out some intentions when it comes to tackling fraud, including insurance fraud.

Primarily, this intention has been signposted by Starmer’s cabinet appointments, rather than an overt statement or plan.

This includes Lord Sir David Hanson – also known as Baron Hanson of Flint – becoming the party’s minister of state with responsibility for fraud and Dan Jarvis, member of Parliament for Barnsley Central, moving into the minister of state for security and economic crime position.

Speaking at last month’s Fraud Charter roundtable (17 September 2024), Jonathan Purvis, senior policy advisor for general insurance at the ABI, said that he did not “really know yet how [Jarvis and Hanson] will divide up responsibility” for insurance fraud.

Despite this initial uncertainty, the trade association has reached out to both men in order to secure meetings, so that it can raise the industry’s “key policy asks”.

Purvis, meanwhile, is initially positive about the new appointees. He understands that Labour plans to continue “some of the work of the previous government, like banning sim farms and improving corporate liability laws”.

According to a Home Office consultation issued last December, “sim farms are devices that can house hundreds of sim cards, which can send out thousands of scam texts to defraud the UK public of millions of pounds.

“These devices are used by criminals to run scam call campaigns and to post misleading, false or phishing messages on social media in bulk.”

Laura Horrocks, customer success manager at Shift Technology, agreed with Purvis that the Labour party allegedly intends to continue the Tories’ fraud focused projects – such as the enforcement of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 – however, she noted “one significant change” as being the inclusion of technology in its broader thinking.

She said: “We really need to include technology as being part of the solution because it is being used against us every day by the fraudsters.

“It’s a positive move [that the Labour government is] looking for more collaboration in terms of data sharing between the technology firms and the financial institutions.”

Although it is still very early days for the Labour party’s new Westminster reign and most commentators have adopted a ‘wait and see’ stance, the creativity of insurance fraud is more vibrant and alive than ever – tackling this type of fraud, therefore, could prove to be an important stepping stone for the administration to achieve success.

I believe Carpenters Group director Donna Scully summed it up best: “Words are cheap – we need to see some action.”