Creative money-making initiatives within the motor insurance-repair-hire-legal complex are a bit like pus in a bag.
If you squeeze the bag in one place, it will all rush up the other end. Or ends. Depending on whether you’re squeezing at one of the lateral extremities or somewhere in the middle.
The point at which the greatest pressure is currently being applied is the point marked, somewhat inexactly, whiplash.
Egged on by an insurance lobby eagerly fantasising at the prospect of a world without personal injury claims, in which cut-throat competition with all comers would no longer look like wilfully self-inflicted injury, HMG had, until just recently, been applying a considerable amount of pressure around this particular area of our metaphorical pus bag.
So much so, that, according to new data from the Ministry of Juice, whiplash claims have fallen by 7.6% in the year-to-date.
Inevitably, however, unprecedented levels of pus pressure are now being reported in other regions of the bag.
Law firm D&C Beach Craft this week, for instance, reported that the number of credit hire claims including a disputed claim relating to vehicle damage and diminution of value has increased by almost 18% over the past 12 months, with the average cost of claims increasing by almost £1,000.
Where previously insurers were mostly just disputing the credit hire element of claims, the law firm reports, “we are also seeing other heads of losses disputed,” speculating not altogehter fancifully that “this could be because claims firms are trying to get claims to a higher value – especially for a credit hire claim that is near to £10,000 – as claims firms try and [sic] add other associated losses to try and [sic] get it into the fast-track.”
Which just goes to show, really, doesn’t it!
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