Are Personal Injury Solicitors to Blame for Insurance Increases or is this an Insurance Industry Smo

As many people will have found out to their cost the price of car insurance has increased significantly for many people throughout 2010. The Financial Times reported that the average price of an annual comprehensive policy increased by 33% to £843 during 2010.



The cheerleaders of the insurance industry have been quick to lay the blame at the feet of personal injury and accident claims companies. Statistics were released first by the Insurance Fraud Bureau who claims that 30,000 car crashes were faked in 2010 and the average cost for each was £17,000.



Quick on the heels of the Insurance Fraud Bureau was Simon Douglas from the AA stating "A proliferation of personal injury claim lawyers has led to the number of injury claims across the board sharply increasing, while fraud has eaten into insurers’ costs"



So from those statements it seems quite clear it’s the fault of personal injury solicitors that everyone’s insurance has gone up. Well not quite, let’s first take a look at the facts. The Insurance Fraud Bureau sounds official? You would have thought this could be an independent government department. Well not quite, this is an organisation wholly funded and run by the Insurance Industry.



Well the AA should be viewed as independent? Well not quite, Simon Douglas from the AA is actually Simon Douglas, Director of AA Insurance.



Also let’s have a quick look at the statement from the IFB, which claims there were 30,000 car crashes faked that cost £17,000 each, well that would certainly lead to an increase in car insurance. Except why is the insurance industry paying out on 30,000 car crashes they know have been faked? How can these figures possibly be correct, if the insurance industry knows these crashes are faked then they wouldn’t pay out but instead report the offenders, who would be classed as criminals, to the police, wouldn’t they? Or are these figures simply made up?



Why would they possibly do such a thing, well another story broke a few days ago, one that the car insurance industry may well want us not to know about. The Office of Fair Trading, an independent body run by the government, took action against 7 leading car insurers including Aviva, AXA Insurance, RBS Insurance Group and Royal Sun Alliance with regards to concerns over price fixing within the industry.



The OFT investigation concluded that there is an increased risk of price coordination by insurers using a new software tool called Whatif? This enables companies to see rivals prices and possible future price changes.



The increase in car insurance that most people have experienced has a whole multitude of factors behind it. One of the main reasons being over the past few years premiums were too low as insurers tried to maintain or increase market share against new entrants to the market place and to compete on the comparison websites and that recent increase is partly a reflection of this unsustainable past policy.



It really doesn’t reflect well on the Insurance Companies so be spinning a story blaming personal injury solicitors particularly just after they have been punished by the Office of Fair Trading for using software which potentially make it easier for them to increase car insurance prices for their own benefit.



Essentially the insurance industry’s long game is they want to get lawyers out of the claims process so they can then deal with injured parties direct. Does anyone really believe that they will deal fairly with victims who aren’t independently represented?



Our research reveals that we always obtain higher damages payments for clients than they had been offered by the insurer before our involvement. Insurers will always put profits before justice!



For more information regarding personal injury accident claims visit http://www.paulrooney.co.uk/