Regrettably, it’s an undeniable fact that a small minority of policyholders exploit this trust by engaging in fraudulent activities. The Association of Insurers, representing private insurers in the Dutch market, has conducted a survey to gauge the prevalence of insurance fraud in the Netherlands. This study reveals that 12% of Dutch citizens admit to committing insurance fraud. This deceitful behavior causes Dutch insurers to incur an annual loss of €1 billion. Consequently, fraud contributes to heightened premium rates (ultimately resulting in increased premium payments) and is considered socially unacceptable.

What do we understand by fraud?

By fraud we mean the deliberate prejudicing of Anker in order to benefit financially yourself (or someone else). Fraud occurs when things are presented differently than they are:

providing incomplete and/or incorrect information;
not telling honestly what happened;
falsifying bills or adjusting amounts on bills;
declaring a higher amount than the actual damage suffered;
reclaiming a rejected claim, with a different claim circumstance and/or a different claim date;
staging a claim.

As indicated, we assume trust. Sometimes we get the impression that a report is not quite right. If we get that impression, we always investigate.

What action do we take?

If fraud is involved, we can take a number of measures, such as:

• reject the claim and not reimburse the claim;
• reclaim a paid claim;
• charge additional costs incurred through a liability claim;
• cancelling the insurance;
• file a police report;
• make a report in the central fraud reporting system of the CIS Foundation.

Registration of fraudsters

We have an internal system in which we register fraud cases. We can also report fraudsters to the Central Information System Foundation (Stichting CIS) and to the Centre for Combating Insurance Fraud (Centrum Bestrijding Verzekeringsfraude (CBV) of the Dutch Association of Insurers. All in accordance with the Insurers & Crime Protocol. In this way, other insurers have also been alerted. When registering, we comply with the requirements of the Protocol on the Provision of Information by Financial Institutions (PIFI) regarding the registration of persons in the incidents register and the External Reference Register (EVR). We also comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (AVG in Dutch and GDPR in English).

Fighting fraud because we have to

We must combat fraud, a responsibility we owe to both society and our genuine customers. This is why Anker maintains a proactive anti-fraud policy and consistently addresses any fraudulent activity.