Validus' anti-fraud tool uncovers £20m of overlapping credit hire claims

AskLudo, the anti-fraud search engine launched by Validus in 2010, has now identified almost £20m of fraudulent or erroneous credit hire cases.

The anti-fraud tool has identified almost 7,000 incidents of cases where credit hire periods overlap through one million searches, accounting for 58,000 days of overlapping credit hire.

Validus chief executive Mike Srokowski said the system benefitted from a wide range of data sources, enabling it to compare credit hire claims across a significant, and expanding, section of the market.

“We have exposure to 25% of all credit hire claims in the UK on our system, so we can spotlight those organisations intent on fraudulent activity,” he said. “It is very difficult for single subscribers to perform these checks themselves as they either don’t have the technological capability to rapidly cross-match submitted claims or to access the significant cross-market perspective that Validus technology provides.

“We are adding over 12,000 claims to the database each month, and the more data we receive, the more powerful it becomes in spotting potential frauds.”

Once a suspected fraudulent claim has been identified by AskLudo, clients can either instruct a Validus claims investigation unit to investigate the case, or can purchase the data in order to investigate the claim themselves.

Srokowski said that such investigations had uncovered a number of fraud rings, including one case where a prestige vehicle had been supplied to eight individuals at the same time for a combined credit hire claim in excess of £200,000.

Srokowski added: “Additionally, we have seen overlapping hire periods in excess of 100 days and it is not uncommon to regularly identify periods in excess of 30 days.”