City tops motor fraud league table for fourth consecutive year
Birmingham was ranked the UK’s biggest motor fraud hotspot for the fourth year in a row, according to the sixth annual Motor Fraud Index compiled by specialist law firm Keoghs.
The city came top of the rather dubious league for all types of motor fraud, accounting for 7.76% of all suspected motor insurance claimants across England and Wales throughout last year.
East London (4.22%), Liverpool (4.03%) and Manchester (3.75%) ranked a rather distant second, third and fourth respectively.
Last year, more than 24,000 claimants suspected of submitting fraudulent claims were referred to Keoghs by a host of the country’s top insurers.
Among the top 40 towns on the index, those experiencing the highest annual increase in suspect claimants were Crewe, which saw a 260% rise, Medway in Kent (145%) and Leicester (58%).
Wales and the South West saw the biggest increase, with 49% more claimants on the firm’s database compared to 2011. Cardiff became a fraud blackspot following a 49% rise in suspect claimants, with a particular increase in fraud related activity and staged accidents.
The 2013 index also revealed a startling spread of fraud over the course of the past three years, a worryingly low number of 12 out of 104 post code areas in the UK are now considered to be relatively low risk, marking a significant increase in the spread of motor fraud since 2009.
Keoghs partner and director of counter-fraud strategy James Heath said: “This year’s results continues a trend we have seen over the past few years; an ongoing and alarming spread of fraudulent motor claims away from the more traditional hotspots we have historically seen across England and Wales. This has resulted in only relatively small areas of the UK being left unscathed by the problem of fraudulent insurance claims.”
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