Insurance Industry Losing Patience Over Claims Reforms

Personal injury has been on the proverbial reform menu for quite sometime and no official news from Whitehall has been forthcoming as to what shape the reforms will take. Although voices of frustration have been mounting for well over a year, no indication of when even a sliver of information will be announces has been forthcoming.

The insurance industry however is beginning to lose its patience with the government and is bringing greater attention to methods that will help ease the problems of the personal injury claims system. To that end, they have launched a plan for a faster and cheaper method of dealing with personal injury claims.

The Association of British Insurers (ABI) says an arbitration system should be set up to hear all personal injury claims worth up to £25,000. It should also decide all claims within six months, with a court case only as a last resort.

The ABI says this system will combat one of the main problems of the present system, mainly that it is too centred around court hearings, which in turn take far too long and fritters away money on disproportionate legal fees.

According to the ABI, the average personal injury claim takes three years to settle because the present system is based on adversarial court hearings. With regards to the monetary cost, claimants end up coughing up on legal and other costs amounting to about £2bn a year.

This kind of decisive strategy expounded by the ABI is reminiscent of a recent change to personal injury claims in Ireland. Last year, an independent body - the Personal Injury Assessment Board (PIAB) - was set up in Ireland last year. The ABI claims that this system has in fact led to claims there

The main features of ABI’s proposed system include a three-month window for insurers to accept or reject claims, a public scale of compensation for specific injuries and financial penalties for claimants or insurers if they behave unreasonably by wasting time or making exaggerated or frivolous claims.

Elsewhere in the industry, other insurers are chiming in with their own recommendations. For instance, Norwich Union has suggested that personal injury claims of less than £1,000 should not be allowed, also that successful claimants winning less than £5,000 should not receive payment to cover legal costs. Additionally, they suggest that no legal costs should be payable where there is no dispute over compensation and breakdowns in the claims process, whether about responsibility or amount, should be mediated before litigated.

Saurav is an author of several articles pertaining to No Win No Fee, Compensation Claims, Personal Injury and other legal articles.