45% of 17-20 year olds exhibit fronting during the quotation process

17/06/2018

LONDON – Analysis of quote information from over 80% of the motor insurance market by LexisNexis Risk Solutions has found that compared to any other age group, 17-20 year olds are nearly twice as likely to manipulate the details they provide for an insurance quote to see how this impacts the premium^[i].  Typically they will switch their position on a policy, from the main driver to a named driver and back again to see which position will deliver the cheapest quote.  

With the average motorist inputting their details online 4 to 5^[ii] times to receive quotes for their insurance and increased shopping activity reported year on year^[iii], tackling the problem of named driver quote manipulation and fronting as well as fraud by ghost brokers has become a major priority for the insurance sector.  One insurance provider has recently reported a 14% increase in policies that have been ghost-brokered^[iv] with named drivers being added to genuine policies.

However, in a first for the UK insurance industry, LexisNexis Risk Solutions is now offering insurance providers a two stage approach to both flag if quotes have been manipulated and then build a picture of risk related to the named drivers on a policy as well as the main policyholder:

Stage 1

• Identify the risk of named driver fraud based on quoting behaviour at point of quote through a new Named Driver module on the Quote Intelligence quoting platform.
• Using quotation data from over 80% of the market, the system connects and compares thousands of quotes obtained in a 90 day time window.
• Specific Named Driver attributes help identify potentially fraudulent applications

Stage 2 

• Build a picture of risk for the named drivers on a policy through Risk Insights, theinsurance-specific customer verification and enrichment solution
• This offers over 200 public and proprietary data attributes combined with the ability to match and link disparate customer records.

James Burton, Director of Product Management, Insurance, UK and Ireland, LexisNexis Risk Solutions said: “Fronting is a real problem for the industry - our own research found 29% of people admitted to ‘fronting’[v].   At the same time, ghost broking is on the increase. IFED recently reported that over 850 reports of ghost broking had been recorded in the past three years.[vi] In some cases ghost brokers will add named drivers to a genuine policy without the policyholder being aware.

“The Quote Intelligence Named Driver module works by looking at the components of all individuals on a quote and making comparisons. One of these is comparing the surname of the proposer to see if it is different to the named driver.  A potential fronting indicator could be where an individual has appeared as the policyholder for one quote then appeared as a named driver on a separate quote for the same vehicle.  It also verifies other factors such as the number of drivers and how this changes through the quoting journey, potential family relationships between proposer and named drivers, and named drivers who have the same surname as the proposer.”

These factors are verified and combined to provide a risk assessment of the named driver as an addition to the risk assessment of the main driver. 

Burton continues: “The Named Driver module and Risk Insights combined delivers insights around named driver risk that have simply never been possible before. We now have the volume of motor insurance quotation data, along with over 200 data attributes to put insurance providers on the front foot in tackling named driver risk.  These powerful solutions will help to identify possible cases of fronting and enable insurers and brokers to ask the right questions at the right time, prior to policy inception to help determine potential fraud, and if the risk is right for their business.”

LexisNexis® Risk Solutions harnesses the power of data, sophisticated analytics platforms and technology solutions to provide insights that help businesses across multiple industries and governmental entities reduce risk and improve decisions to benefit people around the globe. Headquartered in metro Atlanta, Georgia, we have offices throughout the world and are part of RELX (LSE: REL/NYSE: RELX), a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and business customers. For more information, please visit. For more information, please visit LexisNexis Risk Solutions and RELX.