More and more people try to swindle with their travel insurances. According to Jan Sander, vice president at SOS International, the number of fraud cases has increased by 15 percent throughout the last three years.
One of the travel insurance companies that has experienced cases of fraud is Gouda. Jørgen Pedersen from Gouda knows about the problem with people who try to be a little too creative with their ”injuries”.
”I remember a young man who reported a motorcycle accident in Thailand. But when we went through the case it became clear that he had gotten a sex change operation performed,” says Jørgen Pedersen to dinepenge.dk.
”I also remember a young woman who ‘had injured her breast’ during trampolining, but in real life she had her breasts made a bit bigger,” he says.
The problem with the fraud is that it – in the end – is the insurance customers who pay the bills.
”The fraud with travel insurances increases year after year, and of course that has an impact on the insurance prices. The insurance companies have to get the expenditure of the fraud covered, and therefore we all get to pay through more expensive rates,” Jan Sander of SOS International says.
SOS International – who handle travel insurances for most of the Scandinavian insurance companies – say that the types of cheating are wide and different. From people who put in an extra zero in the hospital bill to some who are trying to get the insurance companies to pay for cosmetic surgeries.
Usually, SOS International detect an attempt of fraud when they contact the hospital and it becomes clear that the performed surgery was cosmetic – and not the listed surgery or injury.
Last year, SOS International took care of 200.000 cases of travel- and luggage insurances.
