Insurance fraud hits high, but number of cases down

Fraudulent insurance claims reached an all-time high of 798 billion won ($699 million) last year, the Financial Supervisory Service said Tuesday.

The regulator said the amount insurers in Korea paid for fraudulent insurance claims rose 68 billion won, or 9.3 percent, from 2017. The number of suspects, however, went down 5.2 percent, to 79,179, and the average fraud amount increased from 8.7 million won in both 2016 and 2017, to 10.1 million in 2018.

Non-life insurance fraud accounted for 90.7 percent of the total, standing at 723.8 billion won, followed by life insurance fraud, at 74.4 billion won.

The proportion of fraud involving auto insurance claims decreased steadily, from 47 percent of the total in 2015, to 41.6 percent of the total in 2018.

The regulator said it will cooperate with the relevant authorities to step up its crackdown on insurance fraud.

By Ko Jun-tae