Advances combines Conversant Data's claims fraud detection and prevention expertise, gained from more than 20 years of front-line financial services fraud-fighting experience, with CSC's Fraud Evaluator, a comprehensive software tool for early detection of potential claims fraud, to deliver in-depth analysis and scoring of claims data.

The Association of British Insurers estimates that around £1 billion is lost annually to fraudulent claims in personal lines alone and that at least 10 percent of claims have some fraudulent aspect to them. Because Advances can be used as required and on a fully scaleable basis, even the smallest insurer will be able to cost effectively combat the growing incidence of insurance fraud and achieve significant savings by identifying and dealing with fraudulent claims. Companies can select from a range of services, including claims scoring, cross-referencing existing data with a wide number of sources, validation and eradication of false positive matches, along with additional options for full investigative services.

How Advances Works

Insurers electronically submit key claims data and claims status changes to Advances for processing by CSC's Fraud Evaluator software. By applying anti-fraud business rules and conducting searches across a broad range of external databases to match claims data with any previous incidents, Fraud Evaluator analyses and scores data for levels of potential suspicion. Advances then provides insurers with full reports on claims that have suspicious indicators, and Conversant Data conducts any follow-up that insurers require, from validation of output and prioritising cases to pursue, all the way through to full case investigation.

"For many insurers, especially smaller organisations, establishing a dedicated fraud investigation team is prohibitively expensive," said Mark Jones, managing director of Conversant Data. "Add to that the expected future Financial Services Authority regulations that may be imposed on insurers, and the problem is compounded. That's why outsourcing, where costs are transparent and flexible, offers a viable solution to fight back against fraudsters."

"Insurers need to be rigorous and consistent in analysing and reviewing claims and policy data for suspicious activity, and then acting when fraud is discovered," says John Maitz, vice president of claims solutions for CSC's Financial Services Group. "Advances allows them to do this with a very low cost of entry and an immediate impact from day one."

Advances is available now for motor claims, with household, travel and other classes of business to follow.