I once asked a colleague who had worked for multiple insurerswhy some carriers worked hard on fighting fraud through investmentsin technology and Special Investigative Units, while other insurerschose to do little if anything to combat fraud.

Those that chose not fight fraud looked at this strategy as “thecost of doing business,” he said.

That conversation occurred a little over a decade ago, so manyof the technology tools that are used today weren't even availableto most insurers at that time, but the idea of doing nothing still struck me as crazy.

Today, we know that investing in technology to fight fraud andthe employment of SIUs is the cost of doing business.Insurers no longer concede the battle to the liars and cheaters ofthe world, which policyholders should appreciate. Insurancepremiums are high enough without honest people having to cover acarrier's losses from fraud with higher premiums.

In a survey conducted by the Coalition Against InsuranceFraud and the technology company SAS, the results showed asignificant increase in the number of insurers doing at leastminimal work to fight fraud with technology.

In an article written by Claims magazine editor ChristinaBramlet for our website, coalition executive director DennisJay reports on the encouraging results of the study, including thefact that close to 90 percent of the insurers surveyed are at leastusing basic analytic tools such as automated red flags, claimsscoring, and link analysis.

This begs the question, though: What are the other 10 percentfrom this survey thinking? I'm sure there are small, mutualinsurers that don't see fraud as a problem worthy of investment,but that's a dangerous way to proceed since not all their claimantsare members of the mutual organization.

The good news for insurers is the technology carriers areemploying continues to mature, although not everyone is taking fulladvantage of what is available.

“Although the study suggests that less than half of the insurerssurveyed are employing predictive modeling, text mining, geographicdata mapping and other advanced analytics, we must keep in mindthat we are in an era of tremendous pressure on funding,” says Jay.“The fact that the majority of survey participants say they plan toeither increase investment in these technologies in 2013 or atleast maintain current levels of spending is positive news.”

The battle against fraud is not over by a long shot, but atleast today's insurance carriers are more vigilant than theirpredecessors of less than a generation ago. Many carriers were ledkicking and screaming into the battle thanks to governmentregulations, but no matter how they got there let's keep remindingthem that honest policyholders appreciate the effort.