The law firm has a 15-year relationship with Aviva
Law firm Horwich Farrelly has netted 10 case wins in five days for Aviva, saving the insurer £100,000 in the process.
Initially Aviva identified fraudulent concerns on a number of third party claims which it referred to Horwich Farrelly.
Horwich Farrelly’s Intelligence Team’s further investigations resulted in ten successful convictions for fundamental dishonesty and saved Aviva and its customers over £96,000 in damages and costs.
These results now allow the recovery of their legal fees direct from dishonest claimants.
Horwich Farrelly has worked closely with Aviva for the last 15 years to help the insurer defend its customers from fraudulent cases and ensure customers benefit from the costs saved on unmerited claims.
Cases
The cases confirm the law firm’s stance that there is no such thing as a typical fraudster.
The first case worth £42,000 involved four claimants who were in a minor car collision, one of whom was the father to the other three minors
Two of the claimants said to the courts that they were not injured in the accident but that their father had taken them to accident and emergency for a medical examination and told then to say that they had sustained injuries. The father branded his children “mistaken and confused by the extensive cross examination” and were genuinely injured but the courts were unconvinced.
However, another case involved two claimants who did experience some minor injuries in a motor collision but exaggerated them so much that the Judge stated it was impossible to tell which injuries were actually sustained.
Both of these individuals claimed for up to eleven months of injury to the neck, shoulders and lower back yet failed to mention their alleged lower back pain to their GPs despite attending multiple appointments since the accident.
One claimant also said she was unable to cook for this injury period and was “sweating, shaking and shivering” all night after the minor accident. Both claimants attended their GP after the incident with a full range of motion to their necks, but when examined for the purpose of the medical report some months after their range of motion was severely restricted.
As a result of the exaggerated injuries, the judge stated there was no adequate explanation as to why their conditions had drastically deteriorated. Both were found fundamentally dishonest. They were ordered to pay costs of over £7,000.
Firm and robust
Jared Mallinson, fraud and Aviva client account partner at Horwich Farrelly, said: “We have always taken a very firm and robust approach to combatting fraud in the insurance industry, and will investigate all claims thoroughly.
He explained that the law firm push for fundamental dishonesty findings in the right circumstances, and these cases demonstrate the success of its approach, saving one insurer over £96,000 and allowing them to recover their legal fees.
“Aviva has a clear strategy of listening to its customers and defending them where there are fraud concerns, even when it is uneconomic to do so,” he explained.
Mallinson said that Horwich Farrelly will continue to work closely with clients and the industry to apply a zero-tolerance approach in combatting fraud and hope the outcome of these cases will make people think twice before falsifying a claim.
Duty to customers
Meanwhile Richard Hiscocks, casualty claims director at Aviva stressed that it is here to pay claims and does so 96% of the time.
“However, we also have a duty to our customers to ensure that we are not paying for fraudulent claims, which adds to the cost of insurance. Thanks to Aviva’s leading fraud detection capabilities, we saved our honest customers more than £80m last year,” Hiscocks said.
By working in partnership with law enforcement agencies and Horwich Farrelly, Aviva successfully prosecuted 58 instances of fraud last year, securing custodial sentences of over 68 years, and challenged hundreds of cases of which resulted in findings of fundamental dishonesty.
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