Insurance fraud occurs when people deceive an insurance company to collect money to which they are not entitled. All insurers are at risk of fraud. Despite a number of initiatives introduced in the last few years, to help tackle the problem, fraudulent insurance claims remain a huge problem for the insurance industry.
A study was conducted by a member of the Lie Detector Ltd Ireland team involving collecting primary data directly from insurance policyholders through questionnaires to explore whether introducing the use of polygraph in the insurance claims would influence whether they made an exaggerated or false claim.
The main findings from the study revealed that insurance policyholders are more likely to be tempted to commit fraud if they believed they will not be discovered. This concurs with existing research which suggests that one of the foremost reasons people commit insurance fraud is because they believe will not be found out. When the polygraph was introduced as part of the claims procedure the policyholders were less likely to commit fraud. Concluding that there is potential for the polygraph to be used as an effective deterrent to prevent or reduce the levels of insurance claims fraud.