Steady rise in application fraud

by Gill Montia

Story link: Steady rise in application fraud

CIFAS, the UK’s fraud prevention service, has published research that shows a rise in the number of people lying on application forms to obtain credit, insurance and other financial products.

The analysis compares application fraud cases in 2004 with figures from 2007, and reveals an increase of over 24%.

In 2004, the number of cases filed stood at 62,000, rising to 77,000 in 2007.

In each case, applicants had told “material falsehoods” or supplied false or altered documents to support their application.

Application fraud was most common among those trying to conceal a poor credit history, with over 64% of the cases filed on the CIFAS database falling into this category.

Lies about the length of time an applicant had been resident at an address made up 13% of the frauds.

In the case of the submission of false documents such as passports, utility bills and bank statements, incidents have been rising since 2004.

In terms of gender, in 2004, 68% of application fraudsters were men and 32% were women.

By 2007 a small shift had taken place, with 66% male fraudsters and 34% female.

In 2004, fraudulent applications from men were biased towards asset finance (mostly for cars) and bank accounts, while women were more likely to apply for loans and plastic cards.

Last year, male fraudsters tended towards asset finance and insurance, whereas female fraudsters were more likely to apply for communications products, such as mobile phones, and plastic cards.