Threat to injured workers ability to find insurers

Instead of strengthening a law which is there to protect injured workers the Government proposes to abolish a 1998 regulation requiring employers to hold onto their personal injury insurance details for 40 years.  The intention is to replace it with mere guidance.  This will only reduce the chance of finding an insurer to pay compensation.The government says that it’s pointless having the regulation as it’s impossible to police.  That may be true, but what is really needed is a change of approach.

Some injuries take many years to develop.  For example, mesothelioma, the fatal asbestos cancer, can take 40 years. 

As a lawyer advising people who have been injured by dangerous work practices, I regularly have to find insurers for companies that have gone out of business some years ago.

There is no source I can go to where I can be sure of an answer and drawing a blank is frustratingly common. So it’s a case of turning over what stones I can.

There are a limited number of places that one can look to try and find the right insurer (assuming one existed), including asking the Association of British Insurers which voluntarily circulates its members to see any of them has a record of cover. This may not easy for them to do because there have been mergers and old paper records may be patchy.   Apparently only in 28% of enquiries to the ABI did insurers come forward to confirm they had cover. 

Obviously where a company has gone bust or been dissolved so there are no assets, and subsequently an insurer cannot be found the claimant loses out on what might otherwise have been a strong claim for personal injury.

The flip side of this is that an anonymous insurer may well have saved the cost of paying compensation and thus received a windfall although not deliberately so.  The ABI response rate suggests this may be happening a good deal.

Perhaps it is too late to remedy past problems with record keeping.  What of the future?

Having a complete database of insurance for all vehicles on our roads works very well in road injury cases.  It means that information can be accessed immediately.  Why would that not work for employers liability records? Insurers could enter the details onto a central database where it could be retained for 40 years.  It might take some effort to set up but once going it ought to be fairly easy to maintain.

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