Insurance Crime Bureau talks ‘community data’ and AI in the fight against cybercrime

Tough economic conditions invariably mean an uptick in insurance fraud and physical crimes. Investigating insurance fraud depends on collaborative efforts between the Insurance Crime Bureau (ICB), insurance companies, legislators and law enforcement.

In the #FraudExchange webinar that took place on 30 March 2021, the ICB discussed ways to use “community data” intelligently in both the life and non-life insurance industries.

The session saw leading South African and British professionals – who are at the forefront of detecting, investigating and deterring insurance fraud – sharing their experiences with practical case studies. We also showcased some possible solutions for deploying embedded AI to reduce risk in the insurance life cycle.

The seminar provided a range of informative presentations with active audience engagement through the Q&A and chat boxes.

The session was emceed by Garth de Klerk of the ICB (pictured above). He introduced the overriding theme of the webinar and thanked the sponsors, The Data Company and SABRIC, for their contributions to the session.

The Insurance Crime Bureau is a community-driven organisation, an NPO formed to fight and detect insurance fraud and the related physical crimes.

“We need continuing support from our stakeholders,” said Garth. “We rely on the insurance industry for intelligence, support, funding, solutions and ideas. We welcome networking opportunities.

“If you feel we can share intelligence please feel free to contact us.”

The first speaker was Wouter Pretorius, digital forensic specialist at the South African Banking Risk Information Centre (SABRIC), provided practical explanations and case studies of how SABRIC uses data in digital forensics. He shared practical, real-world information and suggested how we can use various solutions to interrogate data in order to undertake more effective investigations. He shared a number of interesting case studies that highlighted the extent to which information can be gathered from unwitting victims’ electronic devices.

Shaun Pillay, head of detection prevention and deterrence at Liberty Group, spoke about the masses of data that the insurance industry deals with, and the methods used to break that data down into consumable chunks that can be used to investigate crimes.

Cybercrime, he said, has rocketed during Covid, due to the increased number of people working online.

He shared the following interesting stats:

  • Fraud costs SA insurers around R7bn per year
  • The cost of fraud is up 7.3% in 2020 over 2019
  • Identity fraud alone cost over R1bn during the Covid pandemic

Shaun said it’s important to remain focused on keeping all the stakeholders in our business protected from cybercrime. He also shared some fraud detection and deterrence strategies.

Shaun went through a few case studies that highlighted the way in which value is created through sharing of intelligence between the insurance industry and law enforcement. He closed off by looking into the future, which he said is automated and AI-driven – although no one has a crystal ball.

Kali Bagary and Andy Pagett of The Data Company, the main sponsor of the webinar, delivered a presentation on how insurance companies can use data to make better decisions.

Kali said The Data Company, which is headquartered in the UK, is currently working with the SA insurance industry to collect, collate, enrich and cleanse data. 90% of the world’s data has been created in the past two years, he added, and there are new sources of data coming in all the time. So how do we process that data? How do we take actionable insights? Do we use the data? Do we ignore it? Do we share it?

Andy shared learnings from the UK and what the industry there has done in fighting fraud since 2005. He discussed the main components of a sound fraud strategy – people, process and technology/systems – and emphasised the importance of the customer journey as a consideration when putting your strategy together.

Andy unpacked the concepts of the known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns.

“If we can understand these concepts in terms of our data, we will be much better protected,” he said. “We are reactive to the risk because we’re basing all our decisions on the known knowns. We need to be more proactive.”

Garth closed the proceedings by thanking attendees for their time and the sponsors for making the webinar possible. The ICB will be hosting more fraud webinars in the near future. Keep an eye on social media and your inbox for details.