With insurance premiums regularly revised upwards, the temptation to defraud your insurance is more and more tempting. Whether to benefit from better compensation or avoid bad surprises on their bonus-malus, 38% of French people say they are ready to defraud their insurance company and around 1 in 5 insured has even done so (compared to only 11% in 2021). This is the result of a survey carried out in May 2022 on a sample of 1,008 respondents aged 18 or over, and representative of the French population.
To explain the passage to the act, the justification is often financial: 35% of French people who have already defrauded have done so in order to avoid a penalty or to avoid increasing their insurance premium (32%). For 29% of them, it was a question of benefiting from better compensation.
Insurance fraud is also a generational issue, as the study confirms: 36% of 18-34 year olds say they have already defrauded their insurance against less than 15% among those aged 55 and over. Nearly a third of those under 35 even say they would do it again if the opportunity arose. ” Unlike young policyholders for whom the premium is likely to explode in the event of a claim, seniors are less hesitant about the idea of having a penalty and therefore declare more of their claims. Young drivers, for example, already pay a high price with car insurance at around €971/year, or 33% more than the global average. The addition could be even more salty if a penalty were to be added to the bill! explains Itzal Arbide, CEO of LeLynx.fr.
A particularly striking point of the study, the proportion of “solidarity fraud” dominates among policyholders: more than one in three French people have already, or could, use their insurance for the loss of a third party (35%). This trend of “doing a favor to a friend” is also more popular with younger people: 28% of 18-34 year olds have already carried out this type of fraud against 7% for those aged 55 and over. On the other hand, 29% of French people already have or could use the insurance of a loved one in their favor (20% for 18-34 against 4% for those aged 55 and over).
However, it is recalled, defrauding his insurance, whatever it is, can be very expensive for the insured. Failing to report a claim, holding another person responsible or presenting false invoices are all situations considered insurance fraud, with penalties ranging from non-payment of the claim to reimbursement of all claims indemnified by the insurer for 2 years. Recognized as a criminal offence, insurance fraud is also punishable by a 5-year prison sentence and a fine of €375,000.
Better not to give in to temptation.