Property and Casualty Insurance Investigations.

Property and Casualty Insurance Investigations.

Property and Casualty insurance investigations are carried out to uncover frauds or wrong insurance claims when it comes to the destruction of properties, theft of belongings, and accidental injuries to other people. But before going fully into the investigation, it is important to first understand the meaning of property and casualty insurance.

What Is Property and Casualty Insurance?

Property and casualty insurance refers to insurance that safeguards a person’s home, cars, properties, and other belongings. It also covers the destruction of other people’s property and injuries inflicted on other persons.

Legally, property and insurance are two types of insurance. The property insurance aspect protects you and your properties. And the casualty aspect covers you when you hurt another person or damage their properties by accident.

Why Is a Property and Casualty Investigation Needed?

A property and casualty insurance investigation are carried out when an insurer filed a claim. The insurance company investigates to validate the claim. A study reports that almost $80 billion every year is paid on illegal insurance claims. This makes it very important for insurance companies to carry out these investigations. The most common forms of insurance claims fall under car accidents, personal injuries, workplace injuries, and property damage. And all these are property and casualty insurance claims.

How Do Private Investigators Carry Out Property and Casualty Investigations?

Whether it is about accidental injuries or property damage, private investigators could be hired to confirm the legitimacy of the filed claim. In case of stolen belongings, the owner may decide to hide the said belonging in a safe place and file for theft. If a proper investigation is not carried out, this fraudulent claim will result in a loss of money for the insurance company. The same goes for injuries inflicted on other persons, the injuries might be staged just to defraud the insurance company.

The various ways in which private investigators carry out the investigation are explained below.

Surveillance

Surveillance is very important when conducting a P and C investigation. It is often directed at a person who has filed an insurance claim. The surveillance can uncover the illegitimacy of the claim if any.

Oftentimes, surveillance tends to uncover multilayered insurance scams involving several persons. For example, when a stolen belonging claim is filed, the person involved may have colluded with a family member to hide the said belonging somewhere. Proper surveillance can reveal the persons involved in the illegal act when they’re trailed from the person’s house to the place where the belonging is hidden.

In other cases, the claimant might have purchased an expensive luxury item and looking for an illegal means to pay for it. When thorough surveillance is carried out by a property casualty insurance investigator, this scheme would be uncovered.

Extensive Research

Private investigators also research to detect the legitimacy of an insurance claim. This involves photographic reviews of injury and theft claims, confirmation of receipts into property damage claims, and combing through police reports and eyewitness reports.

Research also includes the analysis of every document related to the case.

 

Background Checks

The private investigation into the insurance claim can also include background checks. This involves looking into the background of the claimant. When the person filing a P and C insurance has a history of crimes such as fraud, it may lead the private investigator to dig deeper into the case to determine the legitimacy of the claim. The background check may also reveal the current financial status of the claimant. For example, a person going through a divorce, an expectant couple, a claimant falling behind on the mortgage, or other financial problems may try to commit insurance fraud to get some money.

Review Documents

A private investigator may scrutinize all the insurance documents submitted by the claimant. This is necessary because the person may submit fake or falsified documents from an accomplice to the crime. For example, the claimant may decide to liaise with a doctor to defraud the insurance company. In such a situation, the insurance documents submitted would be falsified.

Can a private investigator make an arrest?

A private investigator is not a police officer, and as such can not arrest a claimant who committed insurance fraud. Private investigators gather evidence and inform the police to make an arrest when a fraudulent claim is confirmed.

Not all private investigators can handle a property and casualty insurance investigation. So, it is important to contact private investigators that specialize in P and C investigations. Seek out expert and professional private investigators who are experienced in the field of property casualty investigations.

About the Author

Chris Cavallo has been in the Security and Investigations Industry for 40 + years and is highly proficient in various areas of Investigations such as Comprehensive Background Investigations, Insurance Fraud , OSINT Research and conducting complex Surveillance Operations. He has done business on every continent either through his own companies or through the partnerships that he has developed and maintained during his professional career.

 

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