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23 December 2008

DEATH RECORDS SCHEME HELPING TO KILL OFF IDENTITY FRAUD
A new scheme is hastening the demise of an insidious type of identity fraud that costs businesses millions of pounds a year and can devastate grieving families.

Finance firms have hailed the release of the names of every person who has died in the UK each week as a pivotal step in the fight against fraudsters impersonating the dead.

This type of fraud takes many forms, from criminals using obituaries to assuming the identity of a dead person to obtain credit, to dishonest family members claiming pensions long after their relative has died.

Identity fraud protection service CIFAS believes this is one of Britain’s most common forms of identity theft, while the Government estimates the cost of identity fraud to the UK economy is at least £1.2bn.

Since September, the General Register Office (GRO) has released around 140,000 death records to carefully vetted organisations to match against their clients’ databases. Already tens of thousands of matches have been made against business records to prevent potential frauds.

One subscriber to the scheme estimates that as many as one in 400 of their clients’ pension schemes are being claimed fraudulently by families whose relatives have been dead for many years.

Mortality checks have found a case where a woman was found claiming her aunt’s pension to pay a mortgage on a house ten years after the old woman had died at the age of 98.

In another case, a pension company was informed their client had died six weeks before the family informed them allowing them to stop payment immediately.

Home Office Minister Meg Hillier said:
“The use of death records in this way will have dramatic impact on fraudsters abusing people’s deaths - a crime which causes financial and personal distress to both businesses and individuals alike.

“We’re sending a strong message to criminals: If you try and steal the identity of someone who has died to commit fraud you will be found out.”

Four firms have already been accredited to receive death register information with three more going through the stringent licensing process. Businesses then submit records such as pension claims, insurance claims and credit applications to the licensees to find out if an individual is deceased.

Faraday Tracing Bureau (FTB), one of the original four firms to be accredited by the GRO, conducts mortality checks for 200 well-known pension funds.

FTB sales director Chris Rattenbury, said:
“Firms who had not done any mortality screening were finding maybe one in four hundred pensions were being claiming fraudulently sometimes for as long as ten years.

“This scheme is stopping this kind of fraud completely. Companies are saving huge sums of money as they are not paying out to fraudsters.”

Michael Trezise, Managing Director of Tracesmart Ltd, said:
“This is proving to be a pivotal weapon in the battle against fraud. We’ve identified a considerable volume of deaths within our client’s customer databases, which allows them to prevent the deceased’s identity from being used for fraud– protecting both company and customer alike.

“As more and more companies begin to use this data, we are confident that the level of this fraud will significantly drop. Simply the knowledge that DRI is being used to tackle fraud is a considerable deterrent to would be fraudsters.”

Peter Hurst, chief executive of CIFAS the UK’s Fraud Prevention Service said:
“The number of individuals affected continues to be far too high. Identity fraud is serious, and no-one should be complacent about it which is why this initiative is a vital step to stamp it out.

“Quite apart from financial losses, the effect on victims can be very distressing. Where a victim’s identity has been seriously compromised, it can be an extremely time-consuming and frustrating process to untangle the threads of deception.”

NOTES TO EDITORS
1. Death registration information has been released under the Disclosure of Death Registration Information (DDRI) scheme since the end of September.

2. The Police and Justice Act 2006 conferred powers on the General Register Office (GRO) for England & Wales and its counterpart in Northern Ireland, whilst GRO in Scotland take their powers from the Local Electoral Administration and Registration Services (Scotland) Act 2006. The three Registrars General supply bulk information contained in any register of deaths to organisations for use in the prevention, detection, investigation or prosecution of offences.

3. Four organisations have been accredited to receive the information from the GRO: Tracesmart Ltd, Synectics Solutions Ltd, Experian Ltd and Faraday Tracing Bureau Ltd. Each firm has a binding licence agreement and will be subject to a compliance regime to ensure the information is used appropriately. A number of firms are undergoing the accreditation process.

4. Approximately 12,000 records a week are made available to the four organisations.

5. The All Parliamentary Group Report on Identity Fraud, published on 6 October 2007 recognised the importance of the Registrars General disclosing death information to combat IOD Fraud.

6. For more information about the death registration scheme log on to
http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/aboutus/ddri/index.asp

7. For more information call the Home Office press office on 0207 035 3819 or the newsdesk on 0207 035 3535.