NetWatch on pet fraud

Criminals defrauding pet insurance companies is currently on the rise and according to new figures from the ABI, is the fastest-growing area of all insurance crime. Recently, NetWatch Global have been instructed on a number of cases concerning claims whereby Policyholders are thought to have falsified their pet’s injuries or even falsified their pets existence entirely. One of these cases in particular, has been discussed below:

NetWatch Global was instructed by a leading pet insurer to assess a claim following claims that one of their Policyholder’s dogs had escaped from their back garden. Strangely the breeder had submitted a similar claim in the weeks preceding the incident.

NetWatch were able to identify that the Policyholder and the Breeder were in fact relatives and are therefore likely to have known each other since birth. We were also able to confirm that the pair were connected to numerous other individuals who had posted on social media regarding allegedly losing their pets in the months preceding this incident, which further aroused suspicion regarding their claim.

More significantly, further searches by NetWatch allowed us to confirm that the Policyholder had in fact sold the dog in question to an unknown individual prior to her claim, thereby confirming that her claim was entirely fraudulent.

The intelligence gathered by NetWatch was provided to the insurer the next day, and on review the claim was rejected almost immediately – avoiding any escalation of claims spend.