Explainer - What are "ghost brokers"?
Ghost brokers are professional fraudsters selling forged or invalid discounted insurance policies to unsuspecting consumers.
They usually advertise their services online or within local communities, typically claiming to be able to secure you a cheap motor insurance policy.
How they operate
Ghost brokers usually operate in one of two ways:
- They forge policy documents and sell them to you, while pretending to work for, or act on behalf of, a legitimate insurance company.
- They purchase a real policy from a legitimate insurance company, but they change important information about you, such as your age, driving experience, no claims history, etc. in order to bring the price of the policy down. The ghost broker then sells the policy to you, and charges you a fee for doing so.
Using a ghost broker
Ghost brokers trick unsuspecting consumers into believing that they are buying a valid insurance policy at a cheap price by using one of the two methods above. This means that your insurance policy may be invalid, potentially leaving you uninsured and liable to pay for any damage caused or offences committed while driving.
Advice for consumers
Ghost brokers are unauthorised to sell insurance to the public and are not supervised by the Central Bank of Ireland. We encourage anyone intending to purchase insurance to check our online registers to ensure that the firm is authorised to provide the service it is offering.
If a firm is not authorised to provide that service, you should not use it.
See also: