Social inflation: The role of claims fraud

Record date: 12/17/24
Air date: 02/26/25

In this eye-opening episode of the social inflation miniseries, Zurich North America’s Delpha DiGiacomo, Head of Claims Investigative Services and Lynne Grinsell, Vice President and Head of State Affairs, Government & Regulatory Relations, and Kristen Thorne, an Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter, discuss the alarming reality of claims fraud and its contributing role in social inflation. Listen as the guests share real-world examples of organized fraud schemes that are unethical and can be detrimental to innocent parties and costing approximately $308 billion a year for businesses and consumers.

In this miniseries, other episodes include:
January 15: 2025 Legislative outlook: Reforming legal system abuse
January 29: Wide implications of third-party litigation funding
February 12: Nuclear verdicts: The drivers, impacts and solutions
March 12: Plaintiffs’ Tactics
March 26: Premises Liability

Guests:

Kristin Thorne
Investigative Journalist

Kristin Thorne is a 5x-Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter. For nearly two years, she has been investigating insurance fraud in New York, particularly questionable construction site injury claims. Her investigative reports which aired on WABC Channel 7 Eyewitness News - the country's #1 local news station - prompted several prominent personal injury law firms to request to withdraw from hundreds of lawsuits they filed. Kristin has her master's degree in broadcast journalism from the prestigious Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and her undergraduate degree from Georgetown University where she graduated magna cum laude.

Delpha DiGiacomo
Head of Zurich Claims Investigative Services
Zurich North America

Delpha DiGiacomo is an accomplished insurance leader with over 20 years of experience in the Property & Casualty space. She has worked with fraud investigations teams for the last 15 years and currently leads Zurich North America’s Claim Investigative Services. Delpha is a member of the International Association of Special Investigations Unit Professionals and is the newly appointed Vice Chair for the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud’s Government Relations Sub Committee.

Lynne Grinsell
Vice President, Head of State Affairs, Government & Regulatory Relations
Zurich North America

Lynne Grinsell is Vice President, Head of State Affairs, Government & Regulatory Relations at Zurich North America. She has been with Zurich for nine years. Grinsell has more than 30 years of insurance experience and has held several government relations and regulatory attorney roles, first for the health insurance industry and later at Travelers Property Casualty. She manages a team that connects Zurich to key legislative and regulatory stakeholders and advocates Zurich’s position on issues facing the insurance industry today.

In addition to her broad insurance portfolio, Grinsell is also focused on the multitude of lawsuit abuse issues impacting the industry, as well as industry innovation initiatives like the responsible use of artificial intelligence. Furthermore, she has worked on efforts to enhance community resilience which is one of the foundations of Zurich’s business.

Grinsell holds a BS in Management from James Madison University, as well as a JD from the Columbus School of Law, Catholic University of America.

Host:

Al Orendorff
Chief Communications Officer
Zurich North America

Al Orendorff is Chief Communications Officer at Zurich North America, where he is a member of Chief Executive Officer Kristof Terryn’s senior leadership team. He previously held communications leadership positions at Allstate Insurance, Aon Corp., Genworth Financial and Choose Chicago. Orendorff began his career as a journalist working in television and radio news, including stints at NBC-TV in Peoria, Illinois, Black Entertainment Television, and WBEZ and WGN radio in Chicago. He is based in Chicago.

(PLEASE NOTE: This is an edited podcast transcript, capturing speakers with natural speech patterns that may include incomplete sentences and/or asides, grammatical errors, verbal shorthand and some statements that may be less clear in print.)

Episode transcript:

AL ORENDORFF: What if I told you that exaggerated or even fake insurance claims might be part of the reason your insurance premiums keep going up? Would you then want to know the connection between claims fraud and what we'll describe as social inflation? You should, and that's what we're going to be talking about today.

Welcome to the Future of Risk presented by Zurich North America. We explore the changing risk and resilience landscape and share insights on the challenges that face businesses to help you meet tomorrow prepared.

This podcast miniseries is all about social inflation. The term “social inflation,” refers to the rising costs of insurance claims and litigation costs that go beyond general economic inflation. They're driven by societal factors rather than traditional market forces. These include social attitudes, legal practices, legal system abuse and cultural norms. The impact goes beyond the insurance industry and leads to higher insurance premiums for businesses, a strain on the economy and growing financial impacts on everyday consumers.

Today, we're exploring claims fraud, which does have an impact, believe it or not, on social inflation. I'm Al Orendorff and I'm joined by Delpha DiGiacomo, Head of Claims Fraud Investigations for Zurich North America. Lynne Grinsell, Vice President and Head of State Affairs for Zurich North America and Kristin Thorne, Investigative Reporter who worked at WABC Eyewitness News in New York. Delpha, Lynne and Kristin, welcome to the podcast.

LYNNE GRINSELL, DELPHA DIGIACOMO, KRISTIN THORNE: [Crosstalk] Thank you for having us, Al.

Factors driving social inflation and defining claims fraud

ORENDORFF: Lynne, can you start us off by describing what is driving social inflation?

GRINSELL: There are a number of factors that are driving these increasing claim costs, and I'm going to name just a few of them.

The first one is larger nuclear verdicts, and nuclear verdicts are defined as any amount over $10 million. Jury demographics and changing attitudes, which also leads into corporate mistrust. For example, juries believe that corporations are putting profits above safety. Plaintiff tactics, such as attorney advertising — we've all seen the billboards and the TV ads.

And legal system abuse, the reptile theory, where the plaintiff bar persuades the jury that the defendant – often a corporation – is the bad guy. Jury anchoring, whereby the plaintiff plants the seed as to what they believe is an appropriate settlement amount.

But it's also about the erosion of the legal system reforms that are in place. Often placing burdensome requirements on insurers. Third-party litigation funding, which hinders resolutions and has the potential for fraud. And finally – and more importantly – the rise in liability lawsuits due to fraudulent schemes.

ORENDORFF: All right, thanks Lynne, for setting that up for us. I want to let our listeners know that we have episodes diving into the drivers that Lynne just mentioned. We'll put a schedule in the show notes. So, Delpha, I'm sure a lot of our audience knows what claims fraud is, but can you help us level set and give a brief description of claims fraud?

DIGIACOMO: Sure. Claims fraud is considered a specific crime in 48 states. And so, it is actually a crime. It is illegal to commit claim fraud. It is generally defined as somebody submitting a claim with a deliberate intention of deception to obtain something illegally, which is usually some level of payout.

And there [are] really two types. There's hard fraud, which is the one that everybody gets excited about. It looks and feels organized; it looks and feels like the stuff we may watch on TV. But more often than not, soft fraud is what happens.

We tend to call that in the insurance industry, “waste and abuse.” It's different in that it is a person or an entity exaggerating pieces of their claim in order to gain just a little more than what they're entitled to.

ORENDORFF: So, “I'll do something and hopefully nobody will notice.”

DIGIACOMO: Correct.

ORENDORFF: Got it.

Impacts of claims fraud on businesses

ORENDORFF: All right, thank you for that. So, what are the impacts of claims fraud on businesses?

DIGIACOMO: Well, you know, let's start with the hard numbers.

So, according to the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud, the cost to businesses and consumers is about $308 billion a year. And that's billions with a ‘B’. Property & Casualty alone is $45 billion. And for those of us that work in the commercial space, we focus a lot on workers' compensation and there's $25 billion in claim fraud in that space.

So yes, the numbers are staggering. It's really a problem. But really what does it mean to general folks? Increased claim and litigation costs? So, Lynne talked a little bit about social inflation and what it means. But the reality of it is that when you take a case in front of a jury, what does the jury see? They see the claim as it's presented. If there is no investigation, then all they're going to see is the inflated bills or the inflated injury to get a little bit more out of that jury at the end of the process.

So, that right there increases the cost of litigation, it increases the value of a claim unnecessarily. There's also for businesses reputational damage. So, when you think about, "Am I an easy target as a business?"

That's what we focus on. Do you present yourself as an easy target? Are you viewed as somebody that is just going to pay your claims and process them and not really focus on dealing with what the facts are and paying what's right, dealing with the injuries as they present themselves to bring the person and make them whole. But really, those are the two biggest factors that affect businesses today.

Insurance companies’ response to fraud

ORENDORFF: Well, thank you for detailing the impact that those remarkable numbers have on businesses and consumers. But what does this mean for insurance companies?

DIGIACOMO: So, for insurance companies, it requires us to evolve consistently. And so, we're always looking at what are the latest trends in fraud? What are the evolving issues, what is the latest technology we can implement in order to be able to more easily identify fraud so that we can catch it early, deal with it at the beginning, not generate cost, and help the people that really have a claim or injury.

And while we're having this conversation on fraud, let me just say, fraud is not the majority of claims. The majority of claims are legitimate. And so, we are talking about a small percentage of claims that have a very large effect on the total financial value that's expended by carriers and therefore the consumers alike.

ORENDORFF: A disproportionate impact, you could say.

DIGIACOMO: I would absolutely say that, yes.

Claims fraud schemes can involve medical and legal bad actors

ORENDORFF: Wow. Okay.

Kristin, your turn. I understand that there's a particular type of claims fraud that's playing a role in these high jury awards that Lynne mentioned. Over the last year as an investigative reporter for WABC in New York, I understand you've exposed a scheme that has all the earmarks of organized crime. Can you talk about that?

THORNE: Sure. Well, thank you for having me, Al.

I think, what we're seeing in New York, is really a result of what appears to be a coordinated effort to use a law that is unique to New York, that makes construction companies, and ultimately insurers, 100% liable for any injury essentially that happens on their site.

What we had happen in New York around the same time that this fraud seemed to become very apparent, was the influx of a migrant population. And it seems to be that there has been an organized effort to use this population to perpetuate this fraud.

How do we know this? Well, we know this from a ton of documentation that I uncovered during my investigation. We see some of this fraud on video, so you can see that people are saying that they fell on these construction sites when there is no such thing that happened. In fact, in some cases, people are just sitting down and calling for help, and there was no injury at all.

When you talk about nuclear verdicts. In some of these cases, again, some of these verdicts have gone through, some are still processing, these plaintiffs are going for tens of millions of dollars. What appears to be nothing on video is claimed to be traumatic brain injury, the necessity of a spinal fusion, which is happening in some cases. We're talking anxiety, stress, depression, very serious injuries from what we can see did not happen.

And so, it's very worrisome. And the message that we've been trying to get — I've been trying to get to New Yorkers particularly — is we are all paying for this. This fraud is hurting every single consumer, every single small business, every single company in this state.

ORENDORFF: I'm struck by the intentionality behind this effort that you were describing a minute ago. So, you've discovered documentation that indicates that these folks or a group of people or whomever purposely went into this enterprise to defraud.

THORNE: Yes. It does appear from — again, a lot of this is still being processed through the courts — but there does appear to be several law firms in New York that are behind or involved in some of this. The level of involvement is still being sorted out right now.

But you know, when you look at these claims and you see the same law firms over and over and over, a rational person looks at that and goes, “How is it possible that the bulk of these claims that I'm investigating seem to all go back to the same few law firms?”

Now, again, this is just me being a rational person and saying this. This seems to be a little strange. Now, there is some legal action now happening against these lawyers and some medical providers, to try to understand the level of what their involvement is here.

We do know that since my investigation, there are hundreds of personal injury construction-related lawsuits in New York City that law firms are attempting to walk away from. Their main reason for that, they say, is because with a problem referral source. So, this would be the person who brought them, the plaintiff. They are all, kind of, pinning it on this person or there are several of them.

Again, it still remains to be sorted out. How much did the law firms know about this referrer? How much were they concerned about alleged fraud?

But there's some really disturbing things happening. There's one video with two men who come up on a scooter and they break apart a sidewalk in New York City. You see them on the video break it apart. Several hours later, a gentleman just happens to be walking by this same sidewalk in New York City. And what happens? Well, he slips and falls, of course.

We now have found out, through looking at the documentation, that the men… one of the men on the scooter is connected by their own admission to the legal team of the man who filed the slip and fall lawsuit. So, this is just the tip of the iceberg. These are the things that I see over and over. And so, there does seem to be some level of organization to this that really New York State should be highly concerned with.

Another case that I uncovered here in New York was a gentleman who inadvertently got wrapped up, it appears, in this fraud. He thought he was signing a job application. It turned out to be, we believe, legal papers. He essentially signed a lawsuit without knowing it.

During the course of this, he ended up receiving several thousand dollars to sign this quote unquote job application from a friend. And the friend said, “You're going to get this check in the mail for applying to this job, and you're going to cash the check. You're going to give me $13,000 and you're going to keep two.” The check was for $15,000, and that is exactly what happened. That is a check from a third-party lending company that we have established operates here in New York.

And I want to mention one thing very quickly. Again, we are talking about a vulnerable population here, that doesn't understand. Some may say, “how did this guy possibly think he was going to get $2,000 for signing a job application?”

I encourage everyone to remember, this is a vulnerable population that we are seeing either A) participating in this fraud or B)becoming victims of this fraud because they don't know how our system works here. And so, yes, he thought that this was legitimate.

Well, a few months go by and he starts getting letters in the mail about a lawsuit with his name on it, and it's for a construction site that he never worked at, and we confirmed that with the construction company. Along with that documentation came forms that he had gone to physical therapy appointments — 16 of them in a three-month period — at a PT (physical therapy) office in Queens.

Well, how is this possible? He never fell on this job site; therefore, he never went to these PT appointments, but someone did. We can see it in the documentation. They have his name, they have his birthdate, they have his address, which most likely came from the quote, unquote job application that he filed. So, I took Carlos with me to the doctor's office because if they're saying that Carlos went to the appointments there, well then Carlos should be able to see his medical records.

Well, we go in and they say, "We're very sorry, we can't give him his medical records because the picture of the patient we have on file is not the man standing next to you." And I said, "Excuse me?" And so, they brought me in the back and they would not release. They released the picture to me. There were some other things they didn't release.

And we can see the picture of the man that came for Carlos' appointments. He submitted to them an ID with Carlos's full Spanish name, his address, and the birth date was off by one thing, by the year, I believe. And so, he went to all these appointments. He also brought with him a letter with his emergency contact. And his emergency contact was the same law firm that initiated this fraudulent claim on behalf of Carlos.

And so again, when we talk about the ring of activity here, you go to a common rational person, there is something going on here. And this patient who posed as Carlos, I did track down his phone number. It's now disconnected, which we find very common in these sorts of things, even for lawyers themselves who end up representing these potentially fraudulent plaintiffs. They just disappear.

Because of that, the lawyers then request to be relieved. But the legal process, as you know, has already started. The insurance has already had to investigate the claim. The damage is already done. The damage starts very quickly. So, that's why I think it's so important that this fraud is really brought to another level in front of legislators in New York. So, people understand that you cannot do this because by doing this, you're hurting everybody.

Evolving challenges for those on the front lines combatting sophisticated insurance fraud

DIGIACOMO: Al, can I just add that what Kristin just said affects the entire population of the United States. This is identity fraud. This is happening to everybody. So, it can happen to you in Wisconsin, in California, in Texas, in whatever state you're in. And so, really the vulnerable population is all of us doing the right thing, against these bad actors that are trying to commit fraud.

This is the stuff that infuriates me because it's literally taking advantage of really good people that he was just trying to get a job. And frankly, if you're a TikTok or Instagrammer, even on Facebook, you'll see solicitation for jobs where you're going to get paid a deposit upfront for your potential work. So, it is not unusual. It might sound weird to a lot of us, but not unusual for people to see this kind of scam.

ORENDORFF: You know, Kristin, I don't know if you or Lynne or Delpha come across this, but, I started my career at Allstate, personal property and casual insurers. So, it's different than what Zurich does. But we ended up leaving the state of New Jersey, the only state that Allstate ever deliberately pulled out of, because we had uncovered, at the time, what you're describing, Kristin, is that these complicated, highly sophisticated rings of auto insurance fraudsters that were siphoning massive amounts of money out of the market that we couldn't keep up with and we couldn't get the government to take it seriously.

We'd had multiple meetings with state government over the years leading up to the decision to leave. But we felt that that was our only option. We have to do something to get people to understand that this market is being poisoned by these were sophisticated rings of auto insurance fraud folks who were doing this.

My point is we couldn't get the attention. Now, I think, I don't know Lynne or Delpha, if you agree, but I think the tide is turned a little bit and I think that people are in large part, I think to some degree anyway, because of Kristin and folks like her are bringing it to the attention in the way that people can relate to.

But whatever it is, I think times have changed, we're probably not beating our heads against the wall as an industry as we may have done 30 years ago. Lynne and Delpha, I don't know if you find that.

DIGIACOMO: Yes, AI. I will agree with you to an extent. I think because fraud is complex, we're still beating our head against the wall, because juries don't understand it, because judges don't understand it, because law enforcement sometimes doesn't understand it.

But to your example, I started in personal lines. I worked in Florida for quite a long time. And if you look at the current situation in the property market in Florida, it is exactly because of fraud, waste, and abuse that there are premium issues for properties here.

GRINSELL: Yes, and I would also agree. I also worked in personal lines at once upon a time. I think at some point within the last 30 years, we started to educate law enforcement, educate department insurance fraud specialists on simple fraud. You know, like on durable medical equipment, for example. Making sure that they understood how much that really does cost and how much it really doesn't cost. Just things like that. So, I just think that we continue to educate as much as we can, and it seems like a lifelong process. But we need to continue doing so that people get the message.

DIGIACOMO: And Al, there's small wins here. There are states that now have dedicated prosecutor offices to insurance fraud as a financial crime because they understand it's an issue. But back in the day, and it might not be 30 years for me, but it sure is close to 25 <laugh>.

I remember being a young claims person doing litigation management with an SIU (Special Investigations Unit) and we actually went to the prosecutor's office to explain the scheme with a board, with tacks, with lines showing all of the connections before there were any of the fancy computer systems that we have today.

So, it's not new, but it's evolved and it gets more complicated. Identity fraud doesn't help. There's all kinds of things happening now that are different.

THORNE: Al, we have multiple insurers that have left New York. It is not uncommon now for construction companies in New York to have to cobble together insurance. Well, they used to just have one primary insurer. They now have five, six, seven and eight just so they can do projects. Let's not even talk about what it's doing to affordable housing across this state, across this country.

ORENDORFF: [Crosstalk] Good point. Good point.

THORNE: The inability to build affordable housing. How can you do that if you can't get insurance or your insurance is so high, that it doesn't make it profitable in any way? The other thing I want to mention, you guys brought up, when we talk about what can companies do. I encourage insurers to look at your ISO (Insurance Services Office) search. Is that what you guys call it?

DIGIACOMO: Yes.

THORNE: An ISO search where you can see where the claims are coming from. We have seen a disturbing trend in New York, and I'm sure it is not just here where we have dozens of claims by plaintiffs all living in one house, one apartment, or one apartment building.

So, it makes sense when you think about from a fraudulent perspective, people know to do it because they talk to each other in the building. Or they are friends and family members, and therefore they talk to each other about how to do this.

But there is a very disturbing trend that we see here. So, I encourage you to really go and look at who are these plaintiffs. Where are they living? And you may start to see that there's a correlation between your plaintiffs and their home addresses.

ORENDORFF: Great stuff. We can talk about this all day. <laugh> It's just amazing to me that the level of thought and the outright sophistication behind a lot of this. And then you've got the folks who are just trying to kind of get over. And then you've got the, the much more complicated long-term, “Corleone family” kind of thing. That just keeps on coming. So, it's an amazing conversation and there's so much money involved, which is why it's still happening.

DIGIACOMO: Exactly.

THORNE: Exactly.

How societal attitudes can exacerbate successful claims fraud cases

ORENDORFF: Delpha, how do schemes like what Kristin just described, end up as fraudulent insurance claims?

DIGIACOMO: They get filed. It's as simple as that. Somebody picks up the phone and calls in the claim and says, “I was hurt or a claim has happened.” But I think one of the things that Kristin's describing is how brazen it feels, right? And she's describing some of this as very organized. I would argue that part of this is a societal issue tied to society's attitudes when it comes to how people view insurance fraud and whether or not they should commit it or not.

So let me give you a little study that was completed in the last two years by the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud — and this is a public study. You can look it up, it's available to everybody. They found based on a representative sample of the census of the United States, that 53 million Americans don't view insurance [fraud] as a crime. So, what happens there?

Who's hurt? Well, a corporation, and we all know that there's an attitude that corporations are not people. They are — I would argue — built by people, where people work. And the owners are people, but they're not viewed as people.

So, 53 million don't think it's fraud. 55% of Americans know someone who has committed insurance fraud. And I will tell you, when I train people on what is insurance fraud, I play a little game and I say, “How many of you know somebody or have heard of somebody in your circle that has committed some level of insurance fraud?” And I give them two or three examples, usually about half the room raises their hand. So, it is so common that people know about it, and therefore it feels like folks are desensitized from it.

The bigger problem is that the study found that about 35% of Americans would definitely or might commit insurance fraud and there was one part of the study that was really disturbing to me, and it ties to the New York part. It's a pretty similar percentage of people that are willing to help their doctor provide false information and medical bills, so that they can get paid.

That is the biggest problem here, I think, is that attitude that needs to change about A) whether or not this is a crime, B) whether or not you should be committing it or not, and whether it's okay for folks like the legal community, like in the medical community, aside from lay people moving in this space.

But really, the claim is filed and there are a number of tools that we use to identify fraud. Some of it are AI (Artificial Intelligence) based. Some of these are predictive, some of them are adjusters or claim handlers that are very savvy and have been doing this job for a long time. Kristin noted it's the same law firms and the same medical providers and the same people. Well, we noticed that. We pull those claims, we start investigating.

ORENDORFF: Well, based upon the attitudes and perceptions that you mentioned and the level of complexity that Kristin mentioned. Lynne, I would guess that you add both of those things up and you can kind of extrapolate that they are major contributors to these very large jury awards. Would that be a fair statement?

GRINSELL: Absolutely, Al. I mean, storytelling is powerful, right? The minute the members of a jury hear the story, the harm that was allegedly done, and the medical treatments that were conducted, some will want to make sure justice gets done in whatever way that looks like to them. As stated by Delpha and Kristin, these victims may or may not have committed fraud, but if they did, and it's not proven, the story sticks and damages are awarded.

So, fraud includes exaggerated claims and medical personnel prescribing unnecessary medical treatment. When you think about it, unnecessary treatments alone can inflate medical costs. Somebody's out there getting a treatment that they didn't even need in the first place. And then medical damage award decisions are often used as a starting point for any non-medical portion of the award, such as pain and suffering, and then work loss benefits.

What businesses can do to advocate for change

ORENDORFF: So, as we wrap, the question comes to mind, what can businesses do?

DIGIACOMO: I'll take that first because I'm probably the closest to businesses in this space. Work with your carrier. Work with their fraud team. Build a relationship with them. I have accounts that have my cell phone number and they'll call me. If they see something, they say something and we look at the claim, determine whether it's appropriate or not.

Full disclosure, part of the time I call back the account and tell them, "Hey, this claim's actually fine. Everything looks good. We've investigated it, it's fine. No problem. Go ahead with whatever we need to do next."

But sometimes it's not and it's really that relationship building and awareness at the account or client level that really makes the difference, because they're going to see it first. Your supervisors are going to see it first. The people that work in your store are going to see it first. And so, if they're aware of what insurance fraud is, the conversation is a lot easier with the carrier and we can get involved earlier.

THORNE: I would also say, look, video is everything. Video is really your only recourse in a court of law. It's not necessarily helpful all the time, but it's the most that you can have. And so, when a jury, or during discovery — the lawyers on the other side, you present this to them and you say, “Really, you want to continue this claim when this is what we see?” That is really the only recourse that you have.

I would also say [have] security on your sites. Unfortunately, I just heard a story in New York City the other day. There's a construction site in Brooklyn. The owner called me and said, someone pretended to be a worker, broke into his construction site and faked a fall and now he's being sued. So, really having your security to a level that you may think is ridiculous is actually going to end up helping you in the end and knowing who's working for you.

Look, anybody… as Delpha has said, anybody is capable of committing insurance fraud. Any worker is capable of it. But I have heard companies in New York are getting much stricter with understanding who is working for them, who are they hiring, really doing their due diligence, and they're finding that that is now paying off. Meaning they know that who is working for them are, as much as you can know, good, honest people who aren't going to pursue these fake claims.

How to get involved

ORENDORFF: Kristin, before I go let Lynne have the last word, I want to ask you a question. As a former reporter myself back in the day, is it difficult to interest your colleagues in the media on a very complicated subject that doesn't always lend itself to compelling video, but does have real monetary, measurable negative impact on society. Is that a tough sell?

THORNE: It was initially, for sure, when I started this investigation, which is why I had my sources really zero in on me. What does this mean for regular people? I needed to understand that. And once I understood that this is affecting every viewer, every person, we are all paying for this, I said that's it. And that's why it's important journalism, because as journalists we are here to hold accountable people in power and people who may be doing things that are wrong, that are hurting innocent people.

In this case, it's the taxpayer. So, I think for journalists and for companies, if you're out there, if you have these videos, if you are sitting on documentation, very clear documentation; so in a lot of these cases that I covered, we really are showing sort of the extreme cases. But those are important because they're very clear.

We have, as journalists, one to two minutes to tell a story on TV. We need very clear situations. So, if you have any of these videos or documentation that you know shows this fraud, I encourage you to reach out to your local news. It is important for the viewer and the public to see what's going on. The journalists will work closely with you, if you're concerned, of course, about identifying in these people in these videos where you are in the legal process. The journalist goes through that with you.

But it's really important that we share these stories because I do think that the jury pool across the country needs to be better educated about how we are all paying for this. It is not the big bad company. It is not the big bad insurer. These are people who are taking advantage of the system and ultimately, it's hurting everybody.

ORENDORFF: Lynne, let me give you the last word.

GRINSELL: Well, thank you. I'm going to repeat what Delpha and Kristin said and say, “Share information, raise awareness.” And from an advocacy perspective, which is where I come from, businesses can get involved in the local or national chamber of commerce, state and national coalitions, civil justice associations, all of those are created so that businesses and other impacted parties can collaborate on the best way to fight legal system abuse. Legislative action is key and we are constantly spearheading education and advocacy efforts to bring efficiency and predictability to the justice system.

ORENDORFF: And if our listeners want to learn how to get involved, they can email us at lsacoalition@zurichna.com.

Well, this has been a fascinating discussion. Thank you all for being here.

THORNE: Thank you. Thank you.

ORENDORFF: And thank you for listening. If you like the show, you have a comment or review wherever you get your favorite podcast, or you can drop us a note at media@zurichna.com. Stay tuned for our next episode in our social inflation miniseries where we'll discuss plaintiff tactics. Our guests will be Allan Kirsh, Head of Claims, Judicial and Legislative Affairs at Zurich North America and Lisa Bellino, Vice President of Claims Judicial and Legislative affairs at Zurich North America. This has been Future of Risk presented by Zurich North America.