Antonia Gineva, FSC member: 75% of claims lodged with the FSC are against the motor vehicle insurance

- Mrs. Gineva, how many claims have been lodged with the Financial Supervision Commission since the beginning of the year and what does data from previous years indicate?
- For the first half of 2011, users of financial services in relation to the capital, insurance and pension insurance markets, have filed a total of 935 claims with the FSC. Overall 660 out of these refer to the insurance schemes, 295 of them concern the social security sector and 80 claims relate to the capital market. As a comparison, the total number of all complaints lodged for the past 2010 was 1,800. A total of 1,095 of these were insurance claims, 218 of them related to the capital market and 513 of them referred to the insurance market. The largest number of complaints concerned the insurance products, but it is quite logical since the consumers of insurance services are several million people. I would not say, however, that there is a particularly large increase in the volume of lodged claims.

Could you mention the most common fraud schemes of which you were alerted?
- We are considering all filed claims. After receiving a complaint, the Commission asks for the opinion of the supervising official on the case described in it. If there is evidence of a committed administrative violation or subsequently doubts arise about the legality of actions of the supervising entity, the Commission should require the whole documentation regarding the claim lodged by the appellant. Should the FSC detect in its consideration that infringements have been committed, a statement of administrative offense is drawn up for which the complainant will be notified.

In fact, the FSC as an administrative body cannot decide itself whether there has been "a fraud". In cases where there is suspicion of a crime committed, the Prosecutor's Office is always notified together with other competent bodies. Based on the filed claims, several conclusions on several schemes of insurance fraud could be drawn up, for example, in case of liquidated damages. The appellant could find a cheaper option for recovery of the inflicted damages, but claiming a larger compensation sum. Should the insurer pay it, the difference remains to the claimant's benefit. However, this scheme is possible in the presence of aide from the insurance company itself. In general, most of insurance fraud could be committed via an insider. Therefore, the self-monitoring exercised by the insurers in their companies is of primary importance.

- Do you envisage legislative amendments with a view of preventing insurance frauds?
- One of the important legislative amendments made to the Bulgarian Insurance Code (BIC) referred to the proposal for the abolition of the Casco insurance labelling, submitted by the Ministry of Interior. This was predetermined by the fact that the marking indicates in some way which car has been insured, thus providing information to the criminal gangs. We, as a Supervision Commission were co-organisers of the insurance fraud conference, where this proposal was submitted.

Another legislative act, instigated by the FSC, relating again to the preventive avoidance of errors and possible frauds refers to the setting up of an information system, which will introduce on-line Civil Liability inurance policies. In this way, the vicious possibility of anti-dating the policies will be eliminated.

I want to emphasise that one of the FSC's main priorities pertains to the protection of consumers. In this connection, all legislative amendments proposed by the Commission are aimed in particular to a greater extent at protecting the interests of users of financial services.

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