Insurers have the reputation of being bad payers who nitpick whenever an opportunity arises. However, this nitpicking activity has a positive impact on their auditing strategy since auditing may prove profitable when claims are not fraudulent. We show that reducing the indemnity payments of audited claims induces a lower fraud rate at equilibrium and that some degree of nitpicking is socially optimal when insurance fraud is a concern. Its remains optimal even if it induces adverse effects on policyholders' moral standards.

The contingent claims analysis of firm financing often presents a debt renegotiation game with a passive bank that does not use its ability to force liquidation strategically, contrary to what is observed in practice. We consider two motives that may lead a bank to refuse to renegotiate: maintaining its reputation to preserve its future lending activity and deterring firms from overstating their debt service abatement when they renegotiate. We show that with public information and private debt only, the optimal probability of debt renegotiation is high when the firm’s anticipated liquidation value is high. Under asymmetric information about liquidation value, the high liquidation value firm may be tempted to mimic the low liquidation value firm to reduce its debt service. To deter such mimicking, banks may sometimes refuse to renegotiate with firms having a low liquidation value.

This paper provides a theoretical analysis of the benefits for an insurance company to develop its own network of service providers when insurance fraud is characterized by collusion between policyholders and providers. In a static framework without collusion, exclusive affiliation of providers allows insurance companies to recover some market power and to lessen competition on the insurance market. This entails a decrease in the insured’s welfare. However, exclusive affiliation of providers may entail a positive effect on customers’ surplus when insurers and providers are engaged in a repeated relationship. In particular, while insurers must cooperate to retaliate against a fraudulent provider under non-exclusive affiliation, no cooperation is needed under exclusive affiliation. In that case, an insurer is indeed able to reduce the profit of a malevolent provider by moving to collusion-proof contracts when collusion is detected, and this threat may act as a deterrent for fraudulent activities. This possibility may supplement an inefficient judicial system: it is thus a second-best optimal anti-fraud policy.