Compo culture: Has the pendulum swung also far?

We’ve written lots about efforts by insurers, the government and the police to crackdown on insurance coverage fraud.

According to the Association of British Insurers, fraud is adding £50 a year to the price of automobile insurance coverage. Only this week, a group of guys from Merseyside had been jailed for their component in a scam designed to defraud insurer LV= of £500,000.

Unintended consequences

But has the welter of adverse coverage of fake and exaggerated claims really started to act as a deterrent for those who do actually have a valid case?

We asked John Baden-Daintree, director of legal solutions at Top quality Solicitors, to give us his thoughts…

Is Britain’s so-named compensation culture placing genuine accident victims off creating a claim?

We’ve heard it frequently adequate: “Britain has a expanding compensation culture with people increasingly creating dodgy claims for accidents and pushing up the price of everyone’s insurance”.

As a solicitor specialising in private injury claims, I hear this line far more than most – in reality, quite a lot anytime I inform anybody what I do for a living!

But whilst it is unarguably a single of those topics that tends to get men and women hot below the collar, I question how a lot these views reflect reality.

Official statistics

The government keeps a record of every injury claim made. Looking at road visitors accidents especially, far from showing that the number of claimants are spiraling out of manage, official government stats show they’re actually falling.

Road site visitors crash claims are down 6.7% since 2011. On prime of that, successive government critiques, like Professor Lofstead’s current assessment of Well being & Security, have discovered absolutely no proof of a compensation culture in Britain today.

The other area exactly where reality does not match preconceptions is more than scams such as crash for money. Freedom of info requests to the UK’s police forces uncovered only 2 such investigations in the final 3 years.

Vulture culture?

But misconceptions persist. Our research shows that a shocking 88% of us think there’s one thing of a ‘compensation culture’ in Britain nowadays.

Sadly this has resulted in a lot of innocent accident victims not pursuing a claim since they ‘don’t want to make a fuss’ (43%).

A third (32%) say they didn’t want to fuel a compensation culture and a additional 13% didn’t want to claim back their losses in case others thought badly of them.

I know of a quantity of folks who have not claimed back their losses simply because they worry about how others will perceive them. But the cost of not creating a claim can be high: on typical, people are left £1,178 out of pocket, which can leave men and women in debt.

Typical losses include things like loss of revenue, healthcare expenses, additional childcare or even sensible issues such as having to go by taxi due to the fact of being unable to drive.

Moreover they are missing out on the injury compensation they are entitled to receive. 

John Baden-Daintree

Suspicious minds

The culture of suspicion that surrounds individual injury claims is also unhelpful to efforts to bring higher transparency to this complete location.

For example, our study on perceptions of individual injury has shown that 43% of people think private injury victims spend their compensation on a household holiday, with 42% believing victims go on a purchasing spree.

Our analysis also shows that only 19% think the funds is employed to get individuals back into the position they have been in ahead of their injury.

This is why we advise you use a solicitor to help you make a productive individual injury claim while avoiding outdated perceptions of the individual injury claims culture, typically held by these fortunate sufficient to have never ever been in that position.

Surely truthful, difficult-operating individuals shouldn’t miss out on the financial compensation they want to get their lives back on track since they are worried that other folks will feel badly of them?

What do you believe? Is insurance fraud as serious a difficulty as we’re led to feel? And would you ever be place off from generating a legitimate claim? Let is know…

Compo culture: Has the pendulum swung also far?