Press Release

Car financiers and police join forces against fraud

7 June 2007

The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and the Finance & Leasing Association (FLA) are joining forces to create a new team of police officers who will investigate frauds against motor finance companies throughout England and Wales.

The new team will operate from a base near Coventry within a new unit, AVCIS (ACPO Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service), set up in December 2006.

Martin Hall, FLA Director General, commented: “This is an exciting further step in our co-operation with the police. In an ideal world the police wouldn’t need private sector resources to enforce the law, but we are realists. Financial crime is a lower priority than we would like. Our members’ answer is to commit their own money to a specialist unit dedicated to investigating frauds against them. This is a commercial decision, and our members, the police and the public will benefit if it succeeds. We are delighted that AVCIS has established a national Vehicle Fraud Unit. This dedicated team is the logical successor to our highly successful cooperation with the Met, and we look forward to working closely with ACPO for many years.”

Detective Superintendent John Wake, who is in charge of AVCIS, added: “For 10 years, FLA has taken a leading role in the credit industry in finding pragmatic solutions to the need for more resource to tackle fraud. The Metropolitan Police Vehicle Fraud Unit has been a great success, and my team and I are looking forward to building on that success.”

FLA’s latest statistics show that the number of consumer motor fraud cases in the year ending March 2007 stood at 1,051. The cost to the industry of this type of fraud was £18.3 million.