Wawanesa joins CANATICS - further increasing investigative footprint in Ontario

TORONTO, Aug. 6, 2014 /CNW/ - Ben Kosic, President and CEO of CANATICS, the Canadian National Insurance Crime Services, today welcomed The Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Company to the fold.   "We are pleased Wawanesa has joined CANATICS and our fight to combat insurance crime.  Our membership now includes ten insurers representing 75% of the direct written premium market for auto insurance in Ontario."

In addition to the company supplying data to CANATICS, Barbara MacIntyre, Vice President of Claims for Wawanesa, will be joining the CANATICS Board.   

CANATICS is a not-for-profit organization focused on using state-of-the-art analytical tools to identify potentially suspicious claims in insurance industry pooled data, to facilitate further investigation by individual insurers.   By identifying these claims with participating insurers, CANATICS will provide insurance companies with an exciting new tool to aid in the investigation of insurance crime. 

Automobile insurance fraud is a significant cost to consumers across Canada, and particularly in Ontario. A report by KPMG Canada, prepared for the Ontario Auto Insurance Anti-Fraud Task Force, estimated that, in Ontario, as much as $1.6 billion per year is paid by insurance companies in response to fraudulent or inflated auto insurance claims. The Anti-Fraud Task Force went on to recommend that "Insurers should move aggressively to establish an organization that would pool and analyse claims data in order to identify potential cases of organized or premeditated fraud."

CANATICS is expected to begin operations in 2015.  Earlier this year it announced a five-year deal with BAE Systems Applied Intelligence (formerly Detica) to detect suspicious auto insurance claims in Canada. BAE Systems Applied Intelligence is a global organization, headquartered in the U.K. with offices in Canada, whose anti-crime solutions are currently being used by over 130 clients, spanning four continents, including six of the top 10 financial banking and insurance institutions in the world  

About CANATICS

Canadian National Insurance Crime Services or CANATICS is a non-profit organization focused on fighting insurance crime by providing insurance companies, the industry with superior intelligence, derived from analytics performed on industry pooled data.  CANATICS maintains an unwavering focus on data quality, privacy and security.

SOURCE: Insurance Bureau of Canada

Ben Kosic, President and CEO, Canadian National Insurance Crime Services, [email protected]