The insurance industry will blame inflation and the rising cost of living. They will say that inevitably this means a rise in costs associated with repairing your car and thus an increase in the premium we must pay as a consumer.
This leaves the question of what has happened with the recent reforms which were promising to deliver lower car insurance premiums for everyone?
The Whiplash Reforms which were implemented in May 2021 were purportedly designed to “reduce insurance costs for ordinary motorists by tackling the continuing high number and cost of whiplash claims” according to the Ministry of Justice.
As a result, the government reduced the amount of compensation you could receive if you suffered whiplash injuries in road traffic collisions and it introduced the Official Injury Claim (OIC) portal to streamline the process for making claims.
The OIC is an online portal which deals with whiplash claims worth under £5000 arising from Road Traffic Accidents. Its main aim was to make the claims process much more efficient, and which could be used by anyone and not just by lawyers and accident management companies.
When the reforms were introduced most Claimant lawyers grew concerned that the OIC would cause many injured claimants to under settle their claims and that it would make their access to justice much more difficult.
To date, the feedback for the OIC has been that it is difficult to use and has in fact impaired the progress of claims. It purports it can be used by anyone and without legal representation, however, recent data from the OIC suggests that since its launch only 10% of people making claims have been using it without a lawyer.
It has further been reported by the justice committee that there is a massive backlog with more than 300,000 claimants waiting for their cases to be resolved, with an average time of 251 days to settle cases. It soon became apparent that most of the delays were caused by ongoing technical issues and other limitations of the online system.
Nevertheless, the OIC did drive down the number of whiplash claims and the latest data shows that in the last couple of years the total cost of injury claims has fallen by 26% and the number of motor injury claims was 45% lower than pre- covid-19 pandemic. So, if the insurers are paying out less for claims, why are our insurance premiums still going up?
Whilst we are yet to see the benefits of lower car insurance premiums, victims of road traffic accidents with genuine injuries, caused by the negligence of other drivers, continue to receive much lower compensation and are forced to grapple with a system which does not make their access to justice any easier.
Next Steps
If you have been involved in a road traffic accident and you need advice about making a personal injury claim, our experienced personal injury team are here to help and can be contacted on freephone 0800 011 6666 or by email at legal@timms-law.com.
