Car insurance fraud to cost EUR 100 mln in losses to Romanian policy providers in 2012

Insurers could lose an estimated EUR 100 million due to fraudulent claims from CASCO all inclusive car insurance policies this year. The fraudulent claims could have been prevented if vehicles had been registered through electronic archiving applications.

The development director of Asisoft Maria Boghian said these applications, which the company sells, prevented losses of EUR 15 million from fraudulent CASCO insurance claims in the first half of 2012. The Asisoft representative gave as an example an Audi vehicle for which an insurance company paid in January total damages of EUR 20,000, after which the owner registered the car with another company, which paid the same amount again. The owner tried the same trick in September, but the request was denied because the car's insurance history was available via the Asisoft software application. According to the Insurance Supervisory Commission (CSA), CASCO insurance premiums decreased by 6.2 percent in the first six months to EUR 206 million, while compensation decreased by 5.7 percent to EUR 213.12 million. Ioana Toader, ioana.toader@romania-insider.com (photo source: sxc.hu)