A single fabricated death led to funeral claims at four South African insurers within a week. Each insurer’s own checks failed to spot it, and the fraud was only uncovered when the claims were compared across the market.
A woman who had died in Mozambique several years earlier was registered dead again in South Africa this year. People claiming to be her extended family then lodged R50,000 claims on new funeral policies at four different insurers between 26 August and 2 September, totalling R200,000.
Each claim arrived with a death registered at South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs and complete supporting documents, according to forensic investigation firm XTND, which uncovered the fraud. None of the insurers could see the claims lodged at the other three.
XTND’s claims scoring platform, Veritas, compares claims against data from its insurer clients and a database of confirmed fraud. It flagged all four claims as high risk on arrival. The same deceased person appeared on new policies at four insurers, the claims came within days of each other, and the certifying doctor and funeral parlour were already linked to 25 other claims on XTND’s database.
“What gave it away was Veritas putting the four claims side by side, for the same woman and in the same week. No insurer can see that on its own,” said Mouna Eksteen, chief executive of XTND.
Investigators obtained admissions from three people within 14 days. A funeral parlour representative admitted registering the false death, the informant admitted paying the representative R5,000 to do so, and one claimant admitted she had never known the woman. All four claims were repudiated on the basis of forged documents.
XTND said funeral claims in South Africa rise from late August to mid-January, and fraud rises with them. Because families need funeral money quickly, insurers tend to ask for fewer documents, which fraud syndicates exploit.
The Association for Savings and Investment South Africa recorded 5,505 fraudulent and dishonest life insurance claims in 2024, up from 4,130 in 2023. XTND advised insurers to treat an official death registration as one check among several, and to compare claims across insurers before payment.
The same weakness exists in the UK, where fraudsters increasingly target bigger payouts. Insurers detected 93,900 fraudulent claims worth £1.34 billion in 2025, according to the Association of British Insurers (ABI). Although case numbers fell 2.7%, the total value rose 14%, and the average detected fraudulent claim reached £14,300. Insurers also stopped fraudulent applications worth £1.8 billion, with application fraud cases up 24%.
The ABI also highlighted organised fraud using fabricated documents, including a £300,000 travel insurance scam built on fake identities and false medical paperwork.
The UK industry has long used shared data to tackle this kind of fraud. The Insurance Fraud Bureau analyses data across insurers to detect organised fraud networks. The Claims and Underwriting Exchange (CUE) database lets insurers see a customer’s claims history across the market. Both are designed to catch the pattern seen in South Africa, where claims that look legitimate to each insurer reveal fraud when combined.
For UK brokers, the case is a reminder of why accurate disclosure and claims history matter. Several policies on the same life or asset, taken out shortly before a claim, is a classic warning sign that shared data now exposes.
It also shows that speed and fraud control need not conflict. Scoring claims before payment lets insurers pay most customers quickly while sending suspicious claims to investigators, which matters most for products like funeral cover where customers need money fast.
