Imagine the following situation. You are driving carefully when another vehicle turns out of a side road and straight into yours. You’re not hurt, but are understandably shaken; your car may no longer be driveable.
You pull over, exchange details, and try to contact your insurer to report the accident and find out what happens next. Although you don’t have the policy number to hand, you know the name of the company, so search for it online.
At the very top of the search results is what appears to be your insurer’s website. The branding looks familiar, the logo is correct, and the phone number seems plausible – so you call it without hesitation.
The person who answers is polite and reassuring. They talk you through what will happen next, arrange for your car to be recovered, organise repairs, and offer a hire car, regardless of whether you think you need one. Over the following days they stay in touch, sending paperwork to sign and making the whole process seamless.
You have no reason to believe they are not, in fact, your insurer. Why would you?
But they are not.
You have actually been dealing with a claims management operation using paid-for online advertisements designed to impersonate genuine insurers. The costs they generate for towing, repairs, car hire and even medical assessments can be eye‑watering. In some cases, people are encouraged to attend medical appointments and persuaded that they may have a valid personal injury claim, such as whiplash.
The difficulty comes later. Those inflated costs are then pursued through the courts on the basis that the accident was not your fault. If the claim succeeds, others pick up the bill. If it fails, you might find yourself personally liable. To make matters worse, you might also face difficulties with your actual insurer for failing to notify them of the accident in the first place.
This is not a theoretical concern.
A constituent came to me having had exactly this experience. They are a retired professional, financially literate, yet they were still caught out. The consequences have been severe. Being scammed does not just cost money; it undermines confidence and leaves people feeling foolish and exposed.
What angered me most was discovering that qualified solicitors are involved in this. Some of the no win, no fee firms operating in this space are properly authorised and regulated. That raises uncomfortable questions about how activity which relies so heavily on deception, can sit alongside professional ethical standards.
I am a Chartered Accountant. Like any profession, ours is not perfect, but we operate within a clear ethical framework. We must undergo regular training on how to identify and manage difficult situations, and acting dishonestly would rightly have serious consequences.
In this case, however, legal professionals appear to be benefiting from arrangements that depend on people being misled at moments of vulnerability. In my view, that risks bringing the profession into disrepute. If regulators exist to uphold standards, then they need to reconsider this type of activity.
Responsibility does not stop with lawyers. The online platforms hosting these advertisements also need to accountable. These adverts are carefully designed to mislead people immediately after accidents – a time when they are stressed, shaken and urgently searching for help.
Search engines and tech companies profit handsomely from placing these ads at the top of results pages, but are failing to apply even basic due diligence. The online world has become a place where some of the most powerful companies on earth ignore fundamental moral responsibility, provided the advertising revenue continues to flow.
That approach has real consequences. Every fraudulent claim is ultimately paid for by law-abiding drivers through higher premiums. The individuals affected bear the personal cost, but the platforms that enable the problem remain untouched.
People should be able to trust that a scam advert will not appear prominently in search results, if at all. They should be able to trust that a solicitor will not be involved in misleading them. When those basic expectations fail, there must be consequences.
If the government is serious about consumer protection, it needs to stop allowing responsibility to fall between regulators and start closing the gaps that scammers exploit so effectively. Trust, once lost, is difficult to rebuild. The very least the public deserve is a system that does not actively lead them into harm.
