In its recently released Survey of Fraud against Businesses, Statistics Canada found that while nearly half of health and property insurance establishments experience fraud, not all incidents are being reported.

The survey found that about 45 percent of health and property insurance establishments experienced fraud, with 77 percent of all incidents involving false or inflated claims. Seven in 10 establishments that were victims of fraud said they experienced financial losses as a result.

Forty six percent of all health and property insurance establishments indicated that police were never or rarely contacted in cases of fraud. About 36 percent said that they did so on occasion. Overall, the most common reasons for not contacting police were that the incident was too minor or that it was handled in some other way,

Only about 18 percent of all individual health and property insurance establishments said that they always or often reported fraud to police.