The Hypocrisy Of Insurance Companies

For years now insurance companies have blamed ‘ambulance chasing’ lawyers for the so called ‘compensation culture’. Therefore, it is with huge delight that I find Jack Straw now campaigning to stop the despicable practices of insurance companies from profiting from their insured’s injuries. He has exposed all of the insurance companies hidden hypocrisy by revealing that rather than lawyers pushing people to make claims for compensation it is indeed the insurance companies that do this, rigorously and relentlessly so, in order that they can be paid a ‘referral fee’ by the solicitor that they refer the client to.

I have seen first-hand over the last few weeks how aggressive these insurance companies are at pushing people to make claims for compensation who otherwise might not do so. My wife was sitting in her car when a car insured by Aviva reversed into her car in a car park. Thankfully she was not injured and Aviva immediately admitted responsibility for their insured causing the accident (they had little choice in the circumstances). However, every time since they have spoken to my wife they have asked her if she is injured, was there anyone else in the car with her and were they injured, and was their anyone else in their insured’s car, how old were they and were they injured too?

As a solicitor who fought for compensation for people who were injured for over 14 years, and now helps to ensure those with injuries are properly looked after by specialist solicitors, I find the whole practice of insurance companies sickening, and it must be stopped instantly. The point is, this could very easily be achieved with two simple steps:

• Insurance companies should be banned from the unscrupulous practice of profiting from passing the details of their injured insured to a solicitor and from forcing their insured to use a particular firm of solicitors to handle their injury claim; and
• The MOJ rather than simply collecting annual fees from claims management companies and doing nothing to enforce the laws already in place should immediately stamp out the cold texting and cold emailing which is rife amongst the larger claims companies (I know because I receive emails and texts from them regularly and have not been involved in an accident for over 10 years so they are clearly just texting and emailing every mobile phone number and email address in the hope that some of the people they attack have been injured in an accident).

Making these simple changes will immediately achieve the only aim that is important; allowing the injured victim to decide if they want or need to make a claim (not being forced to do so by their aggressive insurance company), and then if they do decide to do so, allowing the victim to find and select the solicitor of their choice to help them.

I call on the Right Honourable Jack Straw to carry on his campaign and to stop the practices of unscrupulous insurance companies and claims management companies immediately.

Nicholas Jervis

Solicitor (non-practising) and Managing Director of Loyalty Law