Two Britam employees have been charged with conspiring to defraud their employer of Sh23 million.

Elsie Njanji and Isabella Gitonga were accused of making false entries to disburse a fictitious settlement claim.

“On diverse dates between September 9, 2016 and January 23, 2018 at an unknown place within the Republic of Kenya, jointly with others not before court conspired with intent to defraud Britam General Insurance Company of Sh23.5 million by means of electronic manipulation in the system,” read the charge sheet.

The two false bank account entries were at Co-operative Bank branches in Nakuru and Buru Buru.

They are also alleged to have received Sh23 million into an account opened with Commercial Bank of Africa branch in Upper Hill, Nairobi.

The accused were arrested by the Insurance Fraud Investigation Unit.

A report released in 2017 by audit firm KPMG showed that while Kenya had low volume of fraudulent claims detected (18), when compared to Tanzania’s 104, Kenya had the highest number of undetected fraud cases in the region.

Insurers have struggled with fraudulent claims, which have at times caused delays as companies run out of cash to pay policyholders. 

Claims under general insurance grew 2.4 per cent to Sh56.1 billion in 2017 from Sh54.8 billion in 2016.

On average, claims under the segment which includes motor vehicle, fire, medical, workmanship and personal accident has grown by an average of 13.5 per cent.

In 2017, general insurance made a loss of Sh1 billion, an improvement from a previous loss of Sh2.1 billion.

Undetected cases

A report released last year by audit firm KPMG showed that while Kenya had a low volume of fraudulent claims detected (18), when compared to Tanzania’s 104, it had the highest number of undetected fraud cases in the region.

“Kenya was unable to quantify the detected volume of policy fraud and had a low number of detected claims of fraud cases compared to Tanzania but higher than Uganda.

It did however have the highest scores for estimated percentage of policies and claims that are fraudulent,” said the report