If you lose belongings or have them stolen on holiday, insurers routinely ask you to provide as much evidence as possible to prove that you did actually own those items. That could take the form of receipts, photographs or even the original packaging.

But BBC Radio 4's Money Box programme has learnt that being too meticulous in the details you provide can, in itself, sometimes arouse suspicion.

Bob Howard investigated.

Now if you are going on holiday soon, the standard advice is to make sure you know what's in your bag in case it goes missing or is stolen, because if you have to make a claim on your travel insurance you will be asked for proof of what you have lost. Normally we'd say send in as much information as you can, but Moneybox has learned that if your claim is too detailed, that in itself could cause suspicion.

Andrea from South West London was interviewed by the programme and described her son Lawrence's experience. He set off last July for a trip around South America after finishing his university course and everything went well up until April this year when his backpack was stolen from a bus station in Peru. When he came home, he put in a claim to his travel insurer for 39 items, almost all of which were clothes. In most cases he was able to detail the price, brand name, whether it was bought with cash or on a card and the place and month when it was purchased.

"My son was just trying to be as helpful as possible thinking that when they wanted to check prices to check that his prices were right they could perhaps go on the internet and look up the kind of shoes that he had or whatever. He did know exactly what kind of backpack he had, he knew exactly what kind if sleeping bag he had."

As the 39 items totalled just over £1,000 with no one item exceeding £100 and because they were able to provide so much information and a police report, Lawrence and Andrea hoped it would be a straightforward claim to process So they were surprised when Lawrence's insurer, Insure & Go, wrote after receiving the list to say that it couldn't cover an item unless he
could provide reasonable proof that he owned it or had bought it. It said a receipt, copy of a receipt, a credit card or a bank statement would all be acceptable, but Andrea was concerned that some items were bought a few years ago and so they didn't have receipts and apart from a few smaller items she had bought on her own credit card, the rest were bought with cash.

"I think it would be fairer to say that they need receipts for items over a certain cost like cameras, perhaps watches, jewellery. I don't think it's reasonable to expect people to have receipts for every item that they own for fairly small things on an insurance claim."

When Moneybox contacted Insure & Go, it said it had several concerns about Lawrence's claim. One was that some of the more expensive items had been paid for in cash, whereas some cheaper items had been paid on a credit card when the reverse was normally the case. Perry Wilson, the company's founder and owner, says all insurers have to be vigilant against possible cases of fraud.

Perry Wilson, Managing Director of Insure and Go: "Unfortunately we do come across a lot of claims where people will overinflate the items that they've actually put into what has been lost. This just basically bounces back to the customer at the end of the day by increasing the premiums."

But another reason why Lawrence's claim was being scrutinised was precisely because of the amount of detail he had provided about the stolen items.

Perry Wilson, Managing Director of Insure and Go:"Sometimes people give too much information and that obviously then sparks a little bit more interest. Why would you remember all 39 items down to flip flops and socks? The person may have a great photographic memory and may remember everything they do in their life, fine but give us some meat on the bone to look at ths claim to make sure that we have some kind of substantiating evidence of it."

So can customers ever really provide too much information to their insurer?
Money Box spoke to several other big travel insurance companies. One claims investigator said he understood the concept of the 'too perfect' claim, but he said in the vast majority of the cases he dealt with, the problem was too little detail not too much. If in the end an insurer and customer can't reach agreement, it's the Financial Ombudsman Service which adjudicates. David Cresswell from the service says whilst claimants must be prepared to be scrutinised, insurers must have evidence of attempted fraud before they can turn down a claim.

David Cresswell, Financial Ombudsman Service: "What consumers need to know is that in certain circumstances they might do things which are completely innocent but that for some reason set a low level alarm bell ringing at the insurance company when they first make a claim. If that comes as a dispute to us, we'd be saying to the insurance company why would there be fraud in this case and where is the proof of it? They've got to act on more than just a pattern."

Insure & Go said it would generally only need to see evidence for a reasonable cross section of lost items, although that wasn't mentioned in the letter sent to Lawrence. And the insurance industry as a whole still stresses it is imperative claimants provide as much detail and evidence about their loss as possible as Malcolm Tarling from the Association of British Insurers explains: "Putting in a lot of information when you make a claim does not mean to say that the insurance company will automatically be suspicious. They will look at the cicrumstances of your loss. Companies have a responsibility to all of their customers to make sure that they weed out a small number of claims that may be fraudulent ."