Insurers are registering more and more customers as fraudsters. There are currently about 18,200 people listed on a scam registry. The lion’s share is in court, but that doesn’t apply to everyone, according to an analysis of complaints and decisions by NOS of the Kifid Complaints Institute. And such an incorrect registration can lead to serious consequences.
Insurers do not report how many were entered incorrectly in the so-called external transfer register. Supervisor AFM is not watching either. A handful of falsified records are factual, based on the final decisions of the judges or the Complaints Board.
People on the scam list often lose their insurance. Sometimes they have to pay thousands more to the insurer. Also, other insurers may refuse them or charge a higher premium. In the case of health insurance, for example, insurance companies are not allowed to refuse customers.
Up to eight years on the list
Insurance companies can take action against the fraudsters they uncover without going to court. The Dutch Association of Insurers describes these measures as “generally more effective, desirable and appropriate” for combating fraud than reporting a fraudster.
Insurers share the fraud list with other insurers to prevent the fraud from happening again elsewhere. About 5,000 cases end up on the common scam list each year, where they stay for a maximum of 8 years.
Lawyer Yusuf Ersoy assisted many insured persons accused of fraud in their attempts to be delisted in court. “There are certainly cases where people are wrongly listed on the registry,” the Amsterdam lawyer says.
This situation is also reflected in court decisions. While insurers are right in most cases, several auto insurance and health insurance recalls have been made in recent years. Often the verdict was that they accused someone without sufficient evidence.
In addition to court, insurance customers can contact the Kifid Complaints Institute to assert their rights. Complaining there is free. Ersoy said, “Kifid is cheaper than court proceedings. But it takes longer than summary judgments,” he says.
car sales
Among other things, a vacationer with hail damage was mistakenly included in the list. In August 2019, a hailstorm hit it on Lake Garda. He tried to protect his car as best he could. in vain.
On the form of his full insurance, the man stated that the car was not undamaged and showed signs of wear. He wanted nothing for this harm. Still, the experts looked at all the damage and decided: It’s not due to hail.
The insurer called the man a swindler. He would have caused the damage himself to collect the insurance money. His car insurance was canceled, the insurer asked for 4000 euros and his name was put on the list of scammers. He could no longer normally buy new insurance policies. Therefore, his wife had to sell her car.
The man went to kifi and won the case. There is no evidence that he himself caused the damage. He stated that he did not need money for the old damage, but only for the hail damage.
In April of this year, Kifid ordered the insurer to remove the man from the fraud register, where he had been wrongly placed for two years. He got his insurance back and also 4000 euros.
“An Educational Moment”
The Dutch Association of Insurers emphasizes the importance of detecting fraud. “Some of the scammers are criminally organized” and “believing households pay an additional thousand euros in bonuses every year for the work of the scammers”.
False registrations are “clearly undesirable”. But, according to the association, these rarely occur because insurers “have embedded all kinds of security measures into their processes.
And those statements that show that people like the hapless vacationer are sometimes wrongly on the list for years? “Situations where Kifid decides it’s a false record are always a learning moment for us, we try to learn from them.”
“Scammers deserve to be registered”
Mop van Tiggele, Professor of Insurance Law at Erasmus University, is generally positive about the functioning of the system.
“I can imagine it’s frustrating to have to misregister and have to struggle to unsubscribe. But I don’t see any abusive practices. Situations where registration doesn’t go smoothly hurts, but are penalized by law as a result of the financial sector’s registration requirement. The scam group deserves registration. This remains fundamental to me.
However, there are also those who say that the insurer-customer relationship has deteriorated in this area. Insurance lawyers Jasper Bakx and Agnes Koert wrote in a trade journal in 2017 that much attention was paid to the (fraud) behavior of policyholders. “In our view, more attention should be paid to the behavior of insurance companies as well.”
Among other things, attorneys advocate for publicly available annual figures where clients can see how many people an insurer has incorrectly put on a scam list.
Source: NOS
Roy Brown is a renowned economist and author at The Nation View. He has a deep understanding of the global economy and its intricacies. He writes about a wide range of economic topics, including monetary policy, fiscal policy, international trade, and labor markets.
