Justice CommitteeSupplementary evidence from the Association of British Insurers

Thank you for inviting me to provide evidence to the Justice Select Committee for the Inquiry on the presumption of death on Tuesday 22 November.

At the session I was asked for specific figures on the number of missing persons cases that the insurance industry deals with each year and the number of fraudulent cases.

This information has not been collated before, and as the ABI has over 300 member companies it has not proved possible to gather information from all of them. However, we have received information from companies who represent over 45% of the life insurance market. They tell us that, in the last year, they have dealt with six genuine missing person cases and 11 fraudulent missing person cases—with many insurers reporting that they did not deal with either type last year. It is therefore unlikely that there are more than 20 cases of either type each year across the entire industry.

In my evidence I suggested that the number of cases were presumption of death is an issue is very small and the evidence above would seem to bear this out. While the number of fraudulent cases may seem high in percentage terms, it should be remembered that we are dealing in very small numbers here. It is not statistically significant for the insurance industry.

December 2011