Allianz UK identified more than 34,200 suspected insurance fraud cases in 2025, with its fraud teams preventing almost £174 million in losses over the year.
The insurer said the savings – equivalent to more than 650 fraud cases and around £3.3 million a week – were up 10.5% on 2024, when it recovered over £157 million in fraudulent claims and policy activity.
The results come as the UK market continues to grapple with elevated levels of fraud. Figures from the Association of British Insurers (ABI) showed that insurers uncovered 84,400 fraudulent claims worth £1.1 billion in 2023, a 4% rise in value on the previous year. Motor insurance fraud accounted for 45,800 of those scams, valued at £501 million.
Fraud is now the most common crime experienced in the UK. The Crime Survey for England and Wales indicated that fraud consistently accounts for around 40% of all crimes reported by victims, with an estimated 4.1 million incidents in 2025, a 14% increase on 2024.
The insurer reported an 84% rise in staged accidents in 2025, where two vehicles deliberately collide to create a bogus incident and claim. These often follow familiar “crash‑for‑cash” patterns, such as one vehicle braking sharply after cutting into a lane while an accomplice blocks the target vehicle from changing lanes.
There was also a 61% increase in contrived accidents, in which a fraudster engineers a collision with an unsuspecting driver and then claims for fabricated damage or injury. Such cases can be hard to distinguish from genuine low‑speed impacts without detailed investigation, telematics data or independent evidence.
Allianz additionally flagged an increase in the “ballooning” of casualty claims. In these cases, an initially modest injury claim appears genuine and is accepted, but is then significantly inflated as further, often questionable, injuries or long‑term symptoms are added.
Ghost broking, or the sale of bogus or invalid policies, remains a persistent issue. Allianz said ghost brokers accounted for about £15 million in policy fraud in 2025, with fraudsters continuing to target groups such as young drivers seeking cheaper cover.
Across the market, ghost brokers typically operate via social media, messaging apps and online marketplaces, using forged documents or unauthorised use of insurer branding to appear legitimate. Victims often only discover that they are uninsured when they are stopped by police or attempt to make a claim, leaving them at risk of prosecution and uninsured losses.
Ben Fletcher, director of fraud and financial crime at Allianz UK, said the increased activity has a direct impact on policyholders.
“Insurance fraud is a serious problem that pushes up the cost of policies for honest consumers, but our dedicated team continue the fight through a mix of training, education and tools," he said. "Fraudsters are continually changing their tactics and we need to match their efforts with greater speed and agility than ever before. We’re working more closely than ever with a wide range of suppliers, industry organisations and the police to catch the fraudsters, and our 2025 results indicates that our efforts are working."
Allianz’s use of data‑driven tools reflects a wider trend across the sector. Insurers are increasingly deploying machine‑learning models, social‑network and link analysis, and behavioural analytics at first notification of loss to flag suspicious patterns and connections. Academic work on multimodal fraud‑detection frameworks, such as those that combine images, text and structured data to assess motor claims, underlines the direction of travel in this area.
While Allianz’s figures highlight familiar fraud typologies, fraud‑risk teams across the market are also contending with newer threats. One concern is the use of generative artificial intelligence to create convincing but fabricated crash images, damage evidence or documents to support false claims. Research into AI‑enabled vehicle insurance fraud suggests that these tools can significantly reduce the effort and expertise needed to falsify evidence, while forcing insurers to invest in more sophisticated detection capabilities.
At the same time, deepfake audio and video raise questions about the reliability of some forms of digital evidence. Surveys of UK adults indicate that while direct exposure to harmful deepfakes remains relatively limited, public concern about their potential to facilitate fraud and scams is high.
For insurers, the challenge is to strengthen fraud controls without creating unnecessary friction for genuine claimants or breaching fair‑treatment expectations under the Financial Conduct Authority’s Consumer Duty.
As fraud continues to account for a significant share of crime in the UK and for substantial claims costs within insurance portfolios, investment in counter‑fraud capability – and scrutiny of how effectively it is deployed – is likely to remain a central feature of underwriting, pricing and claims strategies in the years ahead.
