The Association of British Insurers (ABI) is warning the public to remain vigilant against cold-callers who are passing themselves off as the ABI.
The ABI stressed it would never contact individuals about a personal injury claim or endorse a claims management firm. And yet members of the public have been reporting cold calls coming from a firm claiming to be the ABI, or employed by it. Its attempts to contact the firm have failed.
“If someone does contact you about a personal injury claim saying they work with the ABI, our advice is to just put the phone down. This is further evidence of why we need the Civil Liability Bill going through Parliament to fix the broken injury compensation system that these firms are exploiting,” said ABI spokesperson Anthony Wright.
Cold calling refers to aggressive marketing tactics employed by claims management companies (CMCs) regarding minor injuries, the ABI said.
“Tactics can include members of the public receiving spam text messages and cold calls, sometimes even being encouraged to make a claim where there has been no accident,” it elaborated.
Figures from the ABI show that a total of 562,000 insurance frauds were detected by insurers in 2017. Of these there were 113,000 fraudulent claims, and 449,000 dishonest insurance applications. The fraudulent claims were valued at £1.3 billion.
Proposed reforms were lodged in Parliament in March under the Civil Liability Bill, which aims to reduce what the Ministry of Justice describes as the “unacceptably high” number of whiplash claims. The legislation would also change the way the personal injury discount rate for serious injuries is calculated.
