Insurance Fraud

John Bell

Head of Claims, AON

Biography

John has been involved with insurance claims since 1980, in the insurance department of a global freight forwarder and then as a claims broker for Hogg Robinson. He then joined Robins, Davies and Little (Now GAB Robins) as a loss adjuster. His adjusting career involved handling losses in all classes of business and included managing a loss adjusting practice in Greece dealing with international losses.

He returned to broking with Aon in 2000 and was appointed head of claims at Aon Risk Services, Corporate in 2005. He has overseen major transformations in the claims operations to embed added client value, whilst improving technical standards.

John is ACII and FCILA qualified. He currently has responsibility for strategic claims development as well as being actively involved in major losses. His passion is excellence in client claims service delivery.

Julie Smith

Claims Director, Insure & Go

Biography

With many years of Travel insurance experience Julie Smith is currently Claims Director at Travel Claims Services (TCS), the claims arm of InsureandGo Ltd.

Whilst working for AON Julie saw an opportunity to provide a streamlined claims service which had efficiency and customer service at its heart. This led Julie to launch TCS in 2003

This ambition has been realised into a progressive, forward thinking company which has rapidly grown to employ over 35 members of staff and handle over 300,000 claims. This success has been driven by Julie’s unflinching attitude to work and the dedication of a team of trusted colleagues.

Richard Davies

Board Member, Insurance Fraud Bureau

Biography

Richard Davies is a career commercial fraud investigator, and has experience of leading investigations in the Investments, Life, General and Healthcare insurance sectors. He is currently employed by AXA UK as its Fraud Risk Manager, working with Senior Management to identify and scale fraud risks, and to build strategic prevention and detection controls.

Richard is a member of the Association of British Insurers Anti Fraud Committee. He is a champion of collaborative approaches and was closely involved in the definition and set up of the Insurance Fraud Bureau since the concept was first proposed in 2004. He led the project’s business requirements group through proof of concept and business case development throughout 2005, and in his role as a member of the IFB board, has had responsibility for ensuring that the detection performance of the IFB is optimised.

Scott Clayton

Claims Fraud & Investigations Manager, Zurich Insurance Group

Biography

Scott Clayton manages Zurich’s Claims Investigation Unit, a 30-strong team of professionals, including field and telephone investigators, intelligence team, legal adviser and support staff. This specialist Unit is dedicated to protecting both the Customers’ and the Company’s interests, using a variety of tools and techniques to ensure that all suspicious activity is properly and thoroughly investigated.

During his 23 years with Zurich, Scott has dealt with claims across all lines of business and all distribution channels and, in a previous role, headed up the Complaints Team, managing the Company's relationship with the Financial Ombudsman Service. This involved making technical decisions, ensuring compliance with regulatory rules and protecting the Company's reputation and brand. No stranger to speaking at Industry events, Scott was previously a member of the ABI Complaint Steering Group and a co-author of the ABI's Complaint Handling Guide.

These days, as Claims Fraud & Investigations Manager at Zurich, Scott is responsible for the identification and investigation of all suspect claims across the General Business in the UK. He represents Zurich on the ABI Anti Fraud Committee and is a Board Member of the Insurance Fraud Bureau.

Stephen Barkhuizen

Financial Crime Manager, MMA Insurance

Biography

Steve Barkhuizen is currently the Financial Crime Manager at MMA Insurance Plc in Reading. Steve has a solid fraud and financial crime investigations background spanning over 20 years. He started his fraud investigations career in the Commercial Crimes Unit of the South African Police Service in the 1980's and was later seconded to a Special Investigating Unit (SIU) in the South African Department of Justice before joining the SIU on a full time basis as a Manager: Investigations. Steve left the SIU in 2000 to join a boutique forensic accounting firm, Gobodo Forensic & Investigative Accounting in Johannesburg, where he took up a role as a Coordinating Manager. Steve relocated to the UK in 2007 and has been responsible for automating MMA's claims fraud detection processes and for introducing data matching into MMA's fraud detection process.

Kate Carr

Assistant Director, Markets and Regulation, Association of British Insurers

Biography

Kate was appointed to the role of Assistant Director, Markets & Regulation in September 2008 with responsibility for issues including financial inclusion, age discrimination, general insurance regulation and financial crime. The two years prior to that, she worked in the Property, Motor & Liability team on compensation issues. Before joining the ABI, she worked in the policy teams at Postwatch and Bexley Council. In her spare time, she enjoys learning languages, running and is (very) slowly writing her first novel.

Steve Jackson

National Fraud Controller, Zurich Municipal

Biography

Steve Jackson has been employed as National Fraud Controller with Zurich Insurance since September 2004. His responsibilities include developing national fraud strategy and training to combat fraud within the public sector business and liability claims.

He formerly served as a police officer specialising in Road Accident Reconstruction and Fraud in the Road Haulage Industry. As a Special Investigator he spent more than four years investigating fraudulent claims within all lines of business; together with the investigation of suppliers and Claims Management Companies. He is currently responsible for developing solutions in relation to Fraud Risk Management and Customer training.

Steve has a passion for raising fraud awareness as a means to combat fraud within the general community and is the current Chair of the North West Fraud Forum.

Nigel Bartram

Motor Underwriting Strategy Manager, Aviva

Biography

I have worked for Aviva (formally Norwich Union) for over 35 years in a variety of roles connected to risk underwriting and underwriting strategy and was one of a small team that set up Norwich Union Direct in the mid nineties. Current role focuses on Underwriting Strategy, Risk Radar, Data Validation, Road Safety and providing technical support on Motor Insurance issues to Aviva press and corporate affairs teams.

Over the past few years I have been interested in raising the profile of insurance fraud and the duty we have to minimise the impact and therefore the burden on honest policyholders.

Vishal Marria

Head of Financial Services Propositions, Detica NetReveal

Biography

Vishal joined Detica in 2005 and was instrumental in developing Detica NetReveal® for insurance. He was deeply involved with the development of the Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB) platform. He is currently engaged with a range of insurance companies in UK, US, Europe and Asia and has extensive experience in anti-fraud for banking, government and national security.