NICB Goes International

Written By Jim Schweitzer, NICB Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer 

More than a dozen global insurance fraud-fighting organizations gathered in Barcelona, Spain, for the first-ever Global Insurance Fraud Summit. This gathering provided the attendees a unique opportunity to discuss insurance fraud on an international level with leading experts from around the globe. 

In addition to highlighting NICB and our rich history combating insurance fraud, I had the pleasure of highlighting the innovative approaches we have taken to leverage geospatial data to combat insurance fraud. 

Fraud impacts us all in the form of higher insurance costs; as I found through our in-depth discussions, countries like France, Canada, and the United Kingdom are dealing with the same highly organized fraud rings.  

The very same issues our companies deal with in the United States happen all over the world. During this summit, we were able to coordinate, communicate, and collaborate on a variety of topics and trends. Our friends from the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud, and IASIU, also took part in the conversation. 

The threat of fraud is real and widespread, and just as we come up with solutions to address a specific fraud trend, another one pops-up. The Global Insurance Fraud Summit shows that, like us, many other countries have increased their partnerships with law enforcement and help train the right people to identify indicators of fraud.    

Communication is key and reducing insurance fraud is a priority for NICB. It’s important our members know, the fraud community is working together, not only in the U.S., but around the world to identify and combat fraud through detection and prevention.