Global Markets · Asia
Japan, South Korea And Singapore.
Three mature markets with high insurance penetration, strong supervision and very different answers to the same question: how does an insurer establish what actually happened?
Each carries a figure or a rule with no equivalent in the other markets described here. China is not covered.
Scope. Kempron Inc. is headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario. It has no other offices, and no customers or operations outside Canada and the United States. The markets described in this section are the industry's, not Kempron's. Naming a market here is not a claim to operate in it.
Japan
A Repairer Manufacturing The Damage It Was Paid To Repair
Japanese motor insurance has two layers. Compulsory automobile liability insurance, known as jibaiseki, is required for every vehicle under the Automobile Liability Security Act and covers bodily injury only. Property damage and liability above the compulsory limits are covered by voluntary motor policies, which most drivers also hold.
In 2023 and 2024 the market was reshaped by a claims-integrity failure with no close parallel in the other markets on this site. Employees at the used-car and repair chain Bigmotor were found to have deliberately damaged customer vehicles in order to inflate repair claims. Insurers reviewing the chain's work identified roughly 65,000 fraudulent claims, about 30% of those examined. (Reported by Insurance Business Asia, 2024.)
The regulatory response was directed at the insurers as much as at the repairer. The Financial Services Agency issued business improvement orders, including to Sompo Holdings and its Sompo Japan Insurance unit, and required improvement plans. (Financial Services Agency; reported by Bloomberg Law and Insurance Business Asia, January 2024.) The FSA's finding concerned the insurer's own incentives: referral volume and profitability had been weighted above the interests of customers. (Same reporting.)
Two points carry across markets. Damage that is manufactured at the repair stage is invisible to a process that assesses the vehicle only after it reaches the repairer. And an insurer's exposure to a service provider's conduct is a supervisory matter, not only a commercial one. The Japanese framework is set out here.
South Korea
The Clearest Published Gap Between Detected And Actual Fraud
Insurers in South Korea paid a record 1.16 trillion won on fraudulent claims in 2025, up 0.6% on 2024, against 1.12 trillion won in 2023 and 1.08 trillion won in 2022. The number of identified suspects fell 3% to about 105,700. (Financial Supervisory Service, as reported by Yonhap and Korea JoongAng Daily, 31 March 2026. Figures in Korean won.)
Two further figures are worth having, and both come from secondary reporting of the regulators rather than from a primary release. Automobile insurance accounts for 22.4% of detected fraud, behind long-term non-life at 44.7%. The Financial Services Commission has put total fraud exposure including undetected cases at around 9 trillion won, close to eight times the confirmed payouts. (Financial Supervisory Service and Financial Services Commission figures, as reported by Insurance Business Asia and The Korea Times, 2026.)
Every other fraud figure on this site measures what was caught. South Korea is the one market where a regulator has published an estimate of the whole, and the ratio between the two is the most useful number in this section.
Compulsory motor liability cover is required under the Guarantee of Automobile Accident Compensation Act, and insurance fraud carries dedicated criminal provisions under the Insurance Fraud Prevention Special Act. The Korean framework is set out here.
Singapore
The Notification Interval, Written Into The Policy
Singapore has done something no other market on this site has done: it has made the interval between the accident and the report a term of the contract.
Under the Motor Claims Framework, published by the General Insurance Association of Singapore, an accident must be reported to the insurer within 24 hours or by the next working day. The requirement applies whether or not the driver intends to claim and regardless of how minor the damage appears, and it is incorporated as a condition of motor insurance policies. Late reporting can affect a no-claim discount and can put cover for the driver's own claim at risk. (General Insurance Association of Singapore, Motor Claims Framework.)
The framework is an industry instrument rather than legislation, and it does not override statutory third-party protection: under the Motor Vehicles (Third-Party Risks and Compensation) Act an insurer cannot decline liability to a third party for death or bodily injury on the ground that the policyholder reported late. (Motor Vehicles (Third-Party Risks and Compensation) Act; General Insurance Association of Singapore.)
The Claims Problem describes the notification gap as the least examined source of delay and cost in a motor claim. Singapore is the market that has priced it. The Singaporean framework is set out here.