Aviva: AI helped detect £230m of UK insurance fraud

Aviva reported it uncovered a record £230 million of insurance fraud across the UK and is using artificial intelligence to identify AI-generated accident photos, forged paperwork and inflated repair and medical claims.

The insurer reported the schemes range from organised operations producing realistic fake evidence to everyday claims inflation by garages and policyholders.

Aviva said fraudsters are increasingly using generative AI to create convincing images of car accidents and to fabricate invoices and medical reports. The company noted these AI-produced items can look official enough to pass a quick inspection, allowing small groups or individuals to back multiple high-value claims.

To counter the activity, Aviva developed AI systems that analyse millions of data points from current and past claims. The technology performs pattern recognition at scale, checking whether photos fit the described accident physics, whether timestamps and document metadata are consistent, and whether vehicle registration numbers appear in other suspicious claims. The system compares quoted repair costs with thousands of similar jobs in the database to flag outliers.

The insurer described the AI as a triage tool. When the system flags a claim, human investigators review the evidence before any decision is made. The company declined to disclose technical details of the system’s architecture.

Aviva said not all of the £230 million relates to organised crime. A significant portion stems from claims inflation, where prices or losses are exaggerated, for example garages adding unnecessary repairs to invoices or customers overstating the value of stolen items. By analysing large datasets of repair prices and market values, the models identify quotes that fall outside regional and model-specific averages.

The insurer warned that widely available generative AI has altered the fraud landscape. Where networks of complicit garages or medical providers were once needed, a subscription to generative AI can now produce photorealistic images and forged paperwork from a single desk.

The company added that its AI capability enables routine forensic checks across thousands of claims each day that would be difficult to perform manually, and suggested that other customer-facing businesses handling identities, invoices or documents may need similar detection systems.