Aviva pushes for consultation, research refutes their claims

Industry news roundup: week ended 4 Aug 2014:

Major insurance provider Aviva has been pushing for a Government consultation on whiplash claims, yet even as they do so evidence emerges that it’s not needed.

The insurer has been whinging lately about how much money it’s shelling out when it comes to personal injury compensation attached to whiplash claims. Fraud is incredibly rampant, Aviva says, and the number of spurious accident claims being made against it are positively crippling it financially. To that effect it made waves last week in pushing for an idea as absolutely stupid as it is revolutionary: eliminating cash awards for whiplash claims and instead only providing rehabilitation. Aviva’s idea is that it will eliminate fraud since there’s no actual cash awards any more.

The idea is of course laughable, but Aviva is married to the concept. It’s even gone so far as to urge the Ministry of Justice to conduct a public consultation in the hopes that it will build up steam. I suppose you have to give the insurer credit where it’s due by not giving up, but I don’t really think they’re going to get anywhere with this whole concept. Meanwhile new research has just come to light that reveals how flawed Aviva’s approach might be – a new YouGov poll revealed that the number of people making claims for personal injury are relatively low.

In fact, YouGov found that today only one out of every four Brits that suffered an accident or injury of any kind would actually pursue a personal injury compensation claim today. That’s a drop of about four percentage points from the last YouGov poll in 2013, indicating that there are actually less people inclined to make claims against insurers today than there were just 12 short months ago. Fewer potential claimants means fewer claims as well – and that means less money flowing out of Aviva’s coffers (or the coffers of all insurers) and into the pockets of the injured.

Apparently that’s just not enough for Aviva; they want to limit their liability by much more. I’m sure they’d love that but that’s not how this game is played – if Aviva wants to not pay so much in whiplash claims maybe it should run a few advert campaigns on not driving like bloody lunatics. It would likely be more effective in the long run.

 

 

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