Hastings Insurance CIO leads anti-fraud initiative

CIO of Hastings Insurance Services James Fairhurst has been leading an anti-fraud initiative at the UK insurance company that has seen significant business benefits for the organisation.

A Broker Anti-Fraud team reports to Fairhurst and operates a grey list of customers with whom Hastings consider it not in its interests to do business.

“Hastings is a leader in using internal and external data real-time,” Fairhurst says. It can do multiple checks at the point of quote, including those of previous claims, and vehicle identification and analysis, whether the quote is given online or via a call centre. He is also working to increase the forms of data enrichment in use.

Fairhurst created the embryonic Anti-Fraud team back in late 2009. Since its beginnings, Fairhurst has envisioned and delivered many significant technology programmes covering the use of many external data sources, as well as utilising internal data sets such as its grey list of customers with whom Hastings consider it not in its interests to do business with.

Hastings today operates real-time credit checks and customer analysis to instantly decide whether it wants a driver’s custom. That’s impressive when you consider that the company deals with a million quotes a day.

Hastings monitors the online behaviour of drivers seeking insurance, and tracks whether a potential customer changes their accident claims history from nine years to one, for example, to lower the cost of their insurance premium – or, more commonly, the number of convictions they have for speeding.

A key part of the data-led business strategy is the IBM I2 platform.