Phone Validation for Insurance Quote Forms: Reducing Fraud and Improving Contact Rates

Why phone validation matters for insurance quote forms

A phone number on an insurance quote form is doing more work than it looks like. It’s your follow-up channel, your first read on whether the prospect is real, and, if you mishandle it, a TCPA liability waiting to happen. I treat every number that comes through a quote form as three questions at once: can I reach this person, are they who they say they are, and am I allowed to call them.

Real-time validation answers all three at submission. It filters out fraud and junk before it touches your CRM, tells you which channel will actually reach the prospect, and keeps you on the right side of telecommunications rules.

Common problems with unvalidated phone data

Quote forms pull in real prospects and a steady stream of garbage. Without validation, the garbage shows up as a few recurring patterns.

Fraudulent submissions come in on disconnected numbers, VoIP lines tied to synthetic identities, and numbers that cycle through lead generation networks. They eat agent time and quietly distort your conversion metrics.

Wrong contact methods are everywhere: a prospect leaves a landline but expects a text, or an agent fires SMS at a number that can’t receive it. Either way the follow-up stalls and conversions drop.

Compliance risk shows up when you dial a number on a litigator list or contact someone who opted out. A single TCPA violation can run $500 to $1,500 per incident.

Deactivated numbers slip in too, whether from a browser autofill pulling stale data or a prospect deliberately handing over an old number to dodge the follow-up call.

Validating at quote submission

Validate during submission, before the lead ever enters your system. A real-time call to CheckThatPhone takes 1 to 3 seconds and comes back with everything you need on the number.

Here’s a basic request:

curl -X POST https://api.checkthatphone.com/v1/lookup \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "phoneNumber": "+15551234567",
    "litigatorFilter": true,
    "landlineSmsLookup": true
  }'

The fields that matter most for quote validation:

deliverable indicates whether the number is currently active
deactivationDate shows when the line was disconnected (if applicable)
dipCarrier, dipCarrierType, and dipCarrierSubType identify the current carrier and line characteristics
nanpType classifies the line as mobile, landline, or not-mobile (VoIP, toll-free, etc.)
litigator, litigator_type, and litigator_name flag known TCPA litigators when litigatorFilter: true is set

Line type detection for follow-up strategy

Insurance sales runs across voice and SMS, usually over several touches. The nanpType field tells you mobile versus landline, but that’s only half the story.

A lot of landlines now take SMS through carrier services. Add landlineSmsLookup: true to the request and you get:

dipMessagingLookup confirming the lookup was performed
dipMessagingEnabled indicating whether the landline can receive SMS
dipMessagingProvider identifying the service provider

That’s enough to route every lead correctly. A landline with no SMS capability is voice-only. A mobile or an SMS-enabled landline can take automated quote confirmations, policy document links, and appointment reminders by text.

Identifying high-risk submissions

A few number characteristics line up with fraudulent submissions often enough to be worth flagging.

VoIP and prepaid lines, which you can spot through dipCarrierType and dipCarrierSubType, show up disproportionately in synthetic identities and lead fraud. Plenty of real prospects use these services, so don’t auto-reject. Add a verification step before you hand them to an agent.

Recently ported numbers (dipPorted: true) aren’t suspicious on their own. Porting is normal. But a fresh port sitting next to other red flags, like mismatched geographic data, can point to number manipulation.

Geographic inconsistencies turn up when geoState doesn’t match the address on the quote form. People move and keep their numbers, so a small mismatch is nothing. A big one earns a second look.

TCPA compliance through litigator scrubbing

Professional plaintiffs submit insurance quotes specifically to build TCPA cases against carriers. The litigatorFilter add-on checks numbers against known litigator databases.

Set litigatorFilter: true and the response includes:

litigator (boolean) indicating whether the number appears on litigator lists
litigator_type classifying the nature of the listing
litigator_name identifying the associated individual or entity

A litigator match should either be rejected outright or sent to manual review with explicit written-consent requirements before anyone makes contact. The cost of running the check is nothing next to a TCPA settlement.

For more on implementing litigator screening, see our TCPA Litigator Scrub use case.

Deliverability checks and data hygiene

The deliverable flag and its companions (blackList, reason, action) tell you whether the number can take a call. The common cases:

Disconnected numbers return deliverable: false with a deactivationDate
Numbers on carrier blacklists are flagged through blackList: true
The reason field gives human-readable context
The action field suggests how to handle the number (accept, reject, flag for review)

Reject undeliverable numbers at submission and they never get into your CRM to inflate your acquisition costs. If a prospect can’t give you a working number, the quote isn’t actionable anyway.

Implementation considerations

Validation adds latency to form submission. There are three common ways to absorb it.

Synchronous validation calls the API during submission and blocks until results come back. You get immediate feedback, but you have to handle timeouts gracefully.

Asynchronous validation accepts the submission, then validates in the background before routing to agents. Better for the user, slower on fraud detection.

Conditional validation runs the full check only when other risk signals are present (mismatched IP geolocation, a brand-new email domain) and a lighter check on everything else.

Pricing and rate limits for your use case are on the pricing page, and the full API reference lives in the docs.

Measuring impact

Track these before and after you turn validation on:

Contact rate: share of leads where agents reach the prospect
Cost per contacted lead: total acquisition and agent cost divided by successful contacts
Fraud rate: share of quotes found fraudulent after payout
Compliance incidents: TCPA complaints or violations per thousand contacts

Most carriers see contact rates climb 15 to 25% and fraud rates fall 40 to 60% inside the first quarter. The compliance upside is harder to put a number on, and it’s probably worth more than the operational gains combined. Start by turning on litigator scrubbing for every submission, since that’s the line item with the highest downside if you skip it, then layer in deliverability and line-type routing.

For broader applications of phone validation in customer onboarding, see our guide on KYC phone verification.