The Life Insurance Association and the General Insurance Association announced on the 17th that they held the "2025 Insurance Crime Prevention Merit Awards Ceremony."
The two associations selected 125 individuals as insurance crime prevention merit awardees, including police investigators and members of Special Investigation Units (SIU) within the insurance industry, who contributed to the prevention and eradication of insurance crime.
On the 17th, insurance industry officials are taking a commemorative photo at the 2025 Insurance Crime Prevention Merit Awards Ceremony. Life Insurance Association
Sergeant Um Kidon of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, who investigated new types of insurance fraud involving indemnity insurance and arrested multiple brokers, and Inspector Bae Byunghoon of the Busan Metropolitan Police Agency, who apprehended 482 individuals including doctors who issued false medical records to help cosmetic and plastic surgery patients fraudulently claim insurance payouts, were among four recipients of the Financial Services Commission Chairman's Award.
Sergeant Kim Heejae of the Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency and three others received the National Police Agency Commissioner General's Award. Investigators from Samsung Life Insurance, Shinhan Life Insurance, Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance, and Meritz Fire & Marine Insurance received the Financial Supervisory Service Governor's Award.
At the Insurance Fraud Prevention Best Practices Competition, Lee Seungeun, a professional from Samsung Life Insurance, won the top prize, the Financial Supervisory Service Governor's Award, for documenting the organizational insurance fraud characteristics and investigation process of a criminal group that established a medical institution for the purpose of committing insurance fraud.
Last year, the amount detected in insurance fraud reached a record high of 1.1502 trillion won, a 3% increase from the previous year's 1.1164 trillion won. However, the number of detected insurance fraud offenders slightly decreased to 108,997 from 109,522 in 2023.
General insurance fraud accounted for 95.6% of the total. By type, manipulation of accident details was the most common at 669 billion won (58.2%), followed by false accidents at 232.5 billion won (20.2%), and intentional accidents at 169.1 billion won (14.7%).
Cases of forged or altered medical certificates and excessive claims for hospitalization and surgery expenses increased compared to the previous year. The number of employees in the insurance industry and related sectors involved in insurance fraud also rose by 11.1% and 8.2%, respectively.
Kim Cheoljoo, President of the Life Insurance Association, and Lee Byungrae, President of the General Insurance Association, stated, "Close cooperation among investigative agencies, the insurance industry, and related organizations, as well as special attention from the government, are necessary. We will support improvements to laws and systems, including revisions to the Special Act on Insurance Fraud Prevention, to respond to increasingly organized and sophisticated insurance fraud schemes."
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