Since the insurance industry's inception, fraud has proved a perpetual problem, an inherent risk that will likely never be totally eliminated. Carriers have long warned that fraud ultimately causes them to raise premiums to offset resultant losses, but during periods in which markets harden and consumers are faced with fewer options and higher rates, these warnings have a stronger resonance. That's not to say that incidents of insurance fraud necessarily decrease when markets harden. According to the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB), a nonprofit organization supported by 1,000 property and casualty carriers, insurance fraud is perennially the second-most common white collar crime behind tax evasion, and costs the U.S. public roughly $30 billion in property and casualty claims alone annually.
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