Arizona leads nation in auto glass claims; fraud suspected as cause

“More auto glass claims are filed in Arizona than any state in the nation. The National Insurance Crime Bureau says there’s something fishy about that.

Howard Handler, government affairs director for NICB, said he doesn’t believe Arizona highways have that much more loose gravel than roads in other states.

“There is also a lot gravel in California, Texas and New Mexico,” Handler said. “Think of Texas. There’s a lot of gravel there and the state is four times larger than Arizona and there are fewer claims.”

Arizona policyholders filed 2,655,567 auto glass claims from 2015 to 2019, the NICB says. That’s more than California, with 5.5 times the population, and No. 4 Texas, with four times more people. Annually, the number of Arizona auto glass claims climbed to 594,320 in 2019 from 470,136 in 2015.”

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Reading those statistics does seem that some sort of fraud on a wide scale is occurring. Over the last couple of years, insurance companies like Geico have been going after auto glass repair shops with fraud lawsuits. The trickle-down effect of auto glass insurance fraud ultimately results in higher premiums for the insured. Depending on the outcome of these suits, dishonest shops may think twice about running these schemes.

Advantage Auto Glass is the preferred repair facility for many insurance agencies. We handle claims on behalf of our customers and work diligently with these agencies. To learn more about our claims process visit our insurance faq page or call us at 612-343-8984.