Efekoha
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Chuks Udo Okonta
Insurance companies are presently fighting hard to cope with the volume of claims besieging their offices, Inspen has learnt.
According to a prominent Insurance Agent, the volume of claims filled in insurance firms have double since January this year.
He noted that the surge in claims has led to delay in settling claims as underwriters have to properly examine the genuineness of claims before making payments.
He said the economic recession seemed to have forced many people into looking at insurance claims as means to weather their storms.
Chairman, Nigerian Insurers Association (NIA), Eddie Efekoha, said underwriters in recent times have been contending with the challenge of fake claims, stressing that to outsmart the fraudsters, operators now carry out adept investigations to ascertain genuine claims.
He noted that the amidst challenges, operators are also living up to their responsibilities in paying genuine claims, stressing that the vices been perpetuated by fraudsters would not deter insurers in settling claims of those who actually needed to be indemnified.
The menace of fake claims remains a great challenge to insurers across the globe. Yesterday, in India, Police arrested a man who allegedly purchased insurance policies in the name of four daughters who did not exist, and produced bogus death certificates to claim the money after staging their ‘deaths’.
Ramesh Patel, a vegetable vendor, concocted evidence that his ‘daughters’ were charred to death in a fire at his house in Mulad village of Mahuva tehsil in the district and applied for Rs 20 lakh of insurance money from LIC, police said.
He had bought insurance policy of Rs 5 lakh each in the name of four non-existent daughters using fake photographs and documents including birth certificates. The certificates showed that the girls were aged between 8 to 12 years.
On March 13, Patel set his house on fire using a leaking gas cylinder and made insurance claim, Surat (rural) Superintendent of Police Nirlipt Rai said.
To create evidence of charred bodies, he had put four pigs in the house before torching it, the SP said, adding that in reality Patel, who is married, has no daughter of his own.
Police initially registered a case of accidental death of four sisters after the fire, but found during the probe that the whole story was an elaborate concoction.
