Workers compensation fraud is one of the fastest growing areas of insurance fraud and accounts for approximately 25 percent of insurance fraud at the cost of $7.2 billion annually, according to The National Insurance Crime Bureau reports.
Employers end up paying for this fraud with higher insurance premiums and the cost of temporarily replacing the employee, training, overtime, and reduced morale and productivity that can occur in stressful situations where the remaining employees are overworked.
So using the most effective tools available to investigate questionable insurance claims just makes sense as a strategy for lowing your workers compensation insurance costs. Today’s advanced technology can be a powerful tool for catching and prosecuting employees committing workers compensation fraud.
Here are 3 tips on using technology to lower your workers comp insurance costs:
#1. Use Social Media to Investigate Fraud
The use of social media has continued to grow over the past few years, and people of all generations are currently using it. According to HootSuite, 2.8 billion people were using social media by the end of 2016, and 83 percent of Americans have a social media account. Facebook continues to be the most-used platform for all ages. 64 percent of Americans over 11 years of age use Facebook with an average of 1.09 billion active users every day.
Social media investigation has been used in claims investigations for some time. Nearly ten percent of Facebook users have privacy settings that allow all posts and updates to be seen by the general public. You can use this to your advantage and go beyond the typical social media investigation.
Pictures posted on Facebook and other social media platforms contain hidden metadata, which is simply data that describes other data, and because most people don’t adjust the settings on their cameras or smartphones, this information is available for the taking. Metadata includes a date and time stamp that shows when a photo was taken and longitude and latitude information that shows where a picture was taken.
With this information, a “geofence” is created, which tells everyone when and where an event took place, making it difficult for someone to testify otherwise.
Social Media Caveat
There is one caveat with using social media to investigate employee behavior: If the information you find is open to the public and not protected with privacy settings, you can use it; however, you can’t trick an employee into giving you access to their social media pages.
#2. Leverage Vehicle Tracking and Sighting Technology
Today, there are millions of security cameras in every major U.S. city (and even small towns) capturing real-time images of people going about their business, including license plate tracking information that shows where a vehicle is at a particular time. This information can be useful in claims investigations because it
- reveals the location of a claimant’s vehicle,
- establishes a pattern of visited places,
- confirms or disputes routes taken by employees, which can be particularly helpful in “traveling employee” cases.
#3. Utilize Keyword Search Technology
Using “keywords,” you can search for anything on the Internet including posts on social media sites. It is entirely ethical to use this information to find out where someone has been. You will often find information from people (other than your employee) or organizations who have tagged or listed the names of attendees or identify an attendee in a photo. Even if your employee has their privacy settings so that only friends can see their information, others may not.
Technology is a part of everyone’s life today; why not use it if it can help minimize workers compensation fraud?
Contact Us to Save Big on Workers Compensation Insurance!
To learn more about reducing your workers compensation premiums, contact American Insuring Group online, or call us at (800) 947-1270 or (610) 775-3848.
Our independent agents have the freedom to shop among lots of competing carriers, so we have to power to help you save big. Don’t delay, contact us today and start saving!
