By Peter Moroney
Gone are the days of paying for excessive hours of surveillance that yield little results. Contemporary investigation methodology is cleverly moving investigations online, which can speed up case closure rates in an extremely cost-effective way.
Undertaking in-depth online searches is far more advanced than a simple Google search, and can often uncover critical information that can be used to close cases before the more expensive traditional surveillance or factual (circumstance) is required.
Online investigation (or desktop investigation) should be used to complement other investigative methods such as surveillance or factual (circumstance) investigations. In the past, insurance claims officers would use competent surveillance and investigative personnel to establish legitimacy of and investigate claims.
However, as all claims officers will concur, the deployment of surveillance and investigations can be costly due to the length of time required to establish whether or not the Claimant is legitimate in their purported claim. Identifying the most appropriate time to deploy surveillance can be largely ad-hoc, and the results can often be hit-and-miss.
The cost of online investigation can be half that of deploying actual surveillance, and when applied correctly, can aid in identifying and calculating the most opportunistic time for deploying surveillance (or an interview) that has the best chance of obtaining success whilst reducing costs.
In simple terms, an online investigation is a thorough examination of the Claimant to identify what information exists online with relevance to their purported injury. The majority of society today lives life to varying degrees online –gathering socially online, advertising and managing businesses online. Therefore, it is not surprising that most of us have some aspect of our lives captured and preserved online.
A competent online (desktop) investigation goes beyond a simple search of Google, Facebook, White Pages and Twitter, and will normally take anywhere from 7-20 hours – sometimes longer depending on what is uncovered. It is a systematic untangling of everything electronic that can be identified and analysed about the Claimant with particular respect to their purported injury. As little as $700 can be spent to save on claims worth several hundreds of thousands of dollars over the identified insurance period. READ MORE
