FCB Creates Database To Help Insurance Companies Deal With Fraud

The Federal Credit Bureau is an organisation that many of you probably don’t know about, they keep an incredibly low profile but offer a number of interesting services that I didn’t even know existed in our country.

We’ll talk about those in other articles, for now, let’s talk about the Insurance Referencing Bureau. At an event where FCB was pitching their new service to insurance companies and media houses yesterday, they spent a few hours walking us through how this simple portal would alleviate some of the losses insurance companies make because of fraudulent claims.

How will the portal work?

The IRB will be connected to the insurance companies client databases which means whenever an insurance company has a new client, they will appear on the FCB’s database automatically. The thinking behind this is that it will allow insurance companies to have a centralised database of all clients in the industry along with their history.

If a client is insured by multiple insurers, the system will pick it up
Insurers can see the insurance history of the client – i.e where they’ve been before and how long they’ve stayed there. This will help companies assess the risk a client comes with.
Low-risk clients can get better insurance premiums than high-risk clients.

One of the use cases highlighted includes the notorious Kwekwe nurse. The nurse identified terminally ill patients and got their particulars which she would then give to her boyfriend who would open cash back policies without the knowledge of the beneficiaries and when one patient died they claimed $5000 from insurance. FCB believes that because the couple did this thrice, a central database with information could have flagged such activity before loss.

Give to receive…

Whilst the benefits touted are many, the system hinges on the participation of insurers. A central database is only as useful as the information fed to it which means making mistakes when capturing data or not capturing data altogether will make the IRB less useful.

In order to incentivise use of the portal, the FCB has offered insurance companies a 6-month free trial to use the portal – after which the company’s Managing Director Mr Ushe said the service will continue to be affordable.

Competition on the horizon?

One of the questions raised by attendants was about a similar portal being developed by the ICZ but Mr Takunda Ushe was not phased as he highlighted that the ICZ started work on this project in 2015 but are still to implement it in the real world.