Britain's insurers are catching fewer cheats, but more ambitious ones. New figures show the value of fraudulent claims caught by insurers rose by 14% last year, even though slightly fewer cases were detected.
Insurers uncovered £1.34bn of fraudulent general insurance claims in 2025, up from £1.18bn the year before, according to annual data from the Association of British Insurers (ABI). The number of detected cases slipped 2.7% to 93,900.
That combination pushed up the size of the average scam. At £14,300, the typical detected fraud is now worth more than in any year except 2022, when it peaked at £14,600.
Mark Allen, head of fraud and financial crime at the ABI, said: "Although the rate of detected insurance fraud fell slightly last year, our data shows that fraudsters are targeting much bigger payouts. As emerging technologies such as AI become more widely available, fraudsters will continue to look for new ways to exploit them."
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Motor remains the fraudsters' favourite. There were 51,900 bogus motor claims worth £625m, or 55% of all detected cases. The average fraudulent motor claim was about £12,000, the second-highest figure the ABI has recorded since 2015. The ABI said the figures point to fewer but more costly cases, reflecting a shift towards higher-severity fraud.
Property followed the same pattern. Detected cases fell 6.2% to 17,700, but the average fraudulent property claim reached a record £11,400.
The biggest jump was in travel. Detected travel insurance frauds rose 85% to 4,500 cases, although their value grew more slowly, up 16% to £8.6m. That puts the average fake travel claim at a little under £2,000. The exception was one fraudster jailed for four and a half years after submitting more than £300,000 of bogus medical emergency claims, backed by fake identities, forged medical paperwork and sham websites.
By type, exaggerated loss was again the most common fraud, with 26,900 cases of claimants inflating a genuine loss. Contrived incidents, where the crash, loss or event is staged from the start, rose about 30% to around 5,600 cases. Insurers also said they stopped fraudulent applications worth £1.8bn, typically where people hide or misstate information to get cover or cut their premium.
The ABI's list of notable cases included a man whose burglary claims fell apart once police got inside his house.
Matthew Johnson, 42, of Misterton, Nottinghamshire, made four claims to AXA between May 2021 and January 2022. He said high-value items, including MacBooks, televisions, gaming consoles, fishing gear and a large haul of collectible Lego, had been stolen from properties in Shetland and Goole, East Yorkshire. He was paid more than £14,000.
AXA grew suspicious after spotting inconsistencies in his paperwork. Officers from the City of London Police's Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department (IFED) then confirmed with manufacturers and retailers that his documents were fake. When they searched his home in June 2023, they found Lego sets matching the ones he had reported stolen on display in his living room. He was jailed for 28 months at Nottingham Crown Court last December, and the court set a confiscation timetable for him to repay the proceeds.
Another case on the ABI's list was a man jailed for 20 months for persuading women he met on dating sites to take part in staged "crash for cash" collisions.
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Individual insurers' results back up the industry picture. Earlier this year, Aviva said it detected more than 18,400 suspect claims worth £233m across its brands, including Direct Line, in 2025. It reported more claims backed by AI-generated images and doctored documents, and a 39% rise in the value of detected motor fraud. Allianz UK said its fraud team identified more than 34,200 cases and saved nearly £174m, with savings up 10.5% on 2024.
Temporary Detective Chief Inspector Simon Klust, head of IFED, said: "These figures show that, on average, more than 250 fraudulent insurance claims are detected each day, and this is unfortunately likely to be just the tip of the iceberg."
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For counter-fraud teams, "fewer but bigger" changes the job. The challenge is less about sifting huge volumes of claims and more about catching inflated high-value claims, staged incidents and forged evidence, which AI tools are making cheaper and easier to produce.
For counter-fraud teams, "fewer but bigger" changes the job. Damian Rourke, partner and head of fraud at Clyde & Co, said: "Fraudsters are increasingly focused on maximising payouts, often using technology to make claims appear more credible."
The challenge is less about sifting huge volumes of claims and more about catching inflated high-value claims, staged incidents and forged evidence, which AI tools are making cheaper and easier to produce. Rourke said insurers were responding with enhanced detection tools and greater collaboration across the market.
Ursula Jallow, director at the Insurance Fraud Bureau, said: "Insurance fraud is devastating. It costs honest consumers when times are already tough." She urged anyone with information to report it through the IFB's free, confidential CheatLine.
Brokers are on the front line of application fraud and ghost broking, where fraudsters exploit the same channels honest customers use to buy cover. As fraudsters chase bigger payouts with more convincing evidence, stopping them early increasingly depends on every link in the distribution chain.
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