Four Billion Car Sightings to Inform Investigations

December 1, 2015 / 2 min read

Wouldn’t adjusters relish the chance to know if a claimant’s vehicle had bumper damage before the reported date of the accident? And wouldn’t the claims department be interested to discover that a policyholder with a rural Pennsylvania address frequently parks in the Bronx? Endless investigative possibilities open up when you can view vehicle photographs that include a vehicle’s license plate, a date and time stamp, and geo-location. All this is available through Event Links, which can be accessed through the ISO ClaimSearch^® Decision Net^® platform.

Event Links uses license plate recognition technology powered by DRN. Since the vehicle location service’s inception in 2009, the rate of capturing vehicle sightings has grown exponentially. Now, there are more than 4 billion recorded vehicle sightings across the United States and over 100 million sightings are added each month. Here’s the latest heat map showing where the vehicle sightings have been captured:

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Two cases from popular uses of Event Links

Rate Evasion

A claims representative noticed that a police report from an accident listed a different home address for the policyholder than what was recorded in the policy. With a quick license plate search in Event Links, the SIU was able to see more than 20 vehicle sightings in the last 60 days at or near the address in the police report. Any sightings at the policy address were from more than a year ago. The policy address rate was $734 annually, and the new address was over $1,800—more than double.

Preexisting Damage

An adjuster believed the damage reported in a recent claim was inconsistent based on the description of the event, so the adjuster asked SIU to investigate further. After searching the license plate in Event Links, the investigator found a vehicle sighting from 20 days before the accident where the rear left panel of the vehicle was already damaged, giving SIU the proof they needed to confirm that the damage preexisted.

As users explore Event Links, they discover countless ways to use the service, including:

fraudulent auto theft claims
staged auto accidents
false alibis made by claimants, witnesses, or other parties to a claim
commercial use of a personal vehicle
workers' comp and disability fraud

Information available on Event Links includes evidence of a vehicle’s physical location over time, which can prove vital to the detection and verification of insurance claims fraud. Users can choose from a variety of queries, including license plate searches, address searches, and searches for common plates at multiple sites for a specified date range. Each option can help claims staff identify and document location patterns of both vehicles and persons of interest.

ISO ClaimSearch users can access Event Links through the Special Applications section of the Decision Net home page. Decision Net is the ISO ClaimSearch decision support portal that provides adjusters and SIUs with the fastest, most convenient access to the information they need to achieve best results. For more information, please contact info.claimsearch@iso.com.