The Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB) recently launched a campaign to highlight how a widespread tactic to reduce insurance costs, known as 'fronting', is fraud and leaves drivers without valid insurance.

We break the issue down to help you understand the questions you may need to ask drivers, to check they if they have fronted or not.

What is fronting?

Often seen as an innocent loophole to help reduce costs, fronting on car insurance involves someone being a named driver on someone else’s policy, when they should have their own.

Because the price of motor insurance is based on the risk of the individual, the insurer must know who the main driver is so the policy can be valid. If someone misrepresents themselves when taking out cover, this is illegal and violates the policy’s terms and conditions. This leaves the named driver without valid insurance, and both the named and dishonest ‘main’ driver could be found at fault of insurance fraud.

New figures show little over a third of adults (35%) have heard of fronting, and IFB believes thousands of drivers could unwittingly be putting themselves at risk of fraud and driving without valid insurance by participating in the con.

What are the consequences?

If someone has invalid insurance because they’ve fronted, they can face the same consequences as any other uninsured driver. And if they cause a collision, they may be liable for covering all costs.

In addition, when an insurer finds evidence of fronting, the perpetrator can be added to the Insurance Fraud Register (IFR) which is shared amongst insurers and can make it very difficult for them to take out any kind of insurance in the future. This could stop someone legally using a car, running a business or even obtaining a mortgage on a first home.

Fronting is more common than you think. Over 50 people are added to the IFR every week for misrepresenting themselves or deliberately withholding key information on a personal motor insurance application.

What to look out for?

While anyone can front on car insurance, most often it will be a younger or less experienced driver who has put themselves down as a named driver on a relative's policy.

Therefore, at a road traffic stop, it's important to ask questions about the nature of the policy and the driver's use of the vehicle. If it transpires they are a named driver, it's right to question any conditions of these terms and if the insurer is aware of these.

If you need to clarify any of these details with the insurer in question, our Police Helpline may be able to support as we have direct access to fraud teams at many insurers. We're open Mon - Sat, 9am - 5pm. Out of hours, you can raise an enquiry here. 

If you have evidence of application fraud, this can be shared with the IFB via its confidential CheatLine.