Insurance fraud adds around five per cent onto the home insurance, car insurance and other types of insurance premiums paid by honest consumers throughout the UK, a leading industry expert has claimed.

Malcolm Tarling, spokesperson for the Association of British Insurers, says that fraud costs the entire UK insurance industry around £1.6 billion per year - and that these costs are then inevitably passed on to the customer.

"If you look at all the types of insurance fraud put together it costs the industry around £1.6bn per year. A lot of the claims are for the odd £50 here or £100 there but if you add them up, they do represent a huge loss," he commented.

"[Insurance fraud] also adds about five per cent on to all premiums, which is then paid for by honest customers."

The North West Fraud forum recently said that around ten per cent of adults admit to having made a fraudulent claim on a general insurance policy, such as home or car insurance - with opportunistic fraud carried out by individual customers alone costing over £800 million a year.

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