Injury lawyers: compensation culture driven by insurance companies

Injury lawyers & compensation culture

Russell Thomson from The Injury Lawyers explains how insurance companies are driving compensation culture for whiplash claims in a bid to chase referral fees. More from the injury lawyers injury claims website: The Injury Lawyers.

It’s obvious to anyone that it’s all getting way out of hand!

But what’s the reality behind all this? What can we do to solve the problem? We often hear in the news from the insurance companies complaining about higher volumes of claims causing premiums to rise. We absolutely love a good scandal here in the UK – making one out of whiplash is just way too easy to do.

So, why are the government wanting to crack down so hard on whiplash? Are we facing a real compensation culture? And what should be done about whiplash claims to solve the problem?

Let’s Face Facts – It’s a Hard Knock Economy…

As an economist by education, it’s easy for me to try and look at the bigger picture in these tight financial times. Let’s face it – we can’t afford to be paying out huge premiums for insurance. It makes anyone angry to think their premiums are going up and up; it makes me personally angry knowing I have to pay more and more! The insurers have been quick to answer our concerns – “the surge in whiplash claims is increasing everyone’s premiums!!!” All of our purse strings are as tight as we can pull them at the moment.

Naturally, the government want to do something about it. To be able to say to the people “we will take this whiplash problem seriously and do something about it to save all your premiums being too high” is a powerful political tool. We, the British people, like I said earlier, love a good a scandal; and generally like to have a good dig out our government whilst we’re at it! When they turn round and tell us they can save us some cash by solving what seems to be a huge problem in our society today, we’re quick to lap it up and prepare our ballot choices for the next election.

We call it “the compensation culture”. It’s a great catch phrase, isn’t it? But to really understand a problem, we have to delve a little deeper and try to understand what the underlying issues really are…

The Compensation Culture Explained

If you have read the government reports surrounding the Compensation Culture, namely the Lord Young and Lord Jackson reports, then you may well know what I’m going to say next. Amazingly, there is no such thing as a compensation culture! It’s actually a media fuelled myth that was formed in the wake of the whole whiplash problem I’m writing about now, together with the whole “where there’s a blame, there’s a claim” idea! Claims are on the rise, and insurance premiums are on the rise too – that natural assumption it’s because people are claiming left right and centre is the obvious conclusion we draw.

What we should be doing is looking deeper in to the underlying issues; the real problem. The first point of call is to ask one simple question – how has this all happened? How did we get ourselves in to this predicament? Answer this one easy question, and the answer is pretty simple to see.

Why are there more people claiming? Well, it’s safe to say that more people are aware that they have the right to make a claim for compensation, and will therefore use the human right they have to claim from a policy of insurance that covers injuries to third party victims. Which is a quick point in itself – insurance is there to cover people for damages, so why shouldn’t we claim from it?

There is certainly far more advertising for whiplash claims than there used to be. Aside from the adverts on the TV and the radio, type “Whiplash” in to Google or any other search engine and see the flood of results from companies offering you their services for a compensation claim.

But there is something far more sinister at work when it comes to whiplash claims. There is something out there that is the real reason why people are making more claims, including a minority making fraudulent ones. Its two simple words that are so powerful they have the ability, when utilised in the right way, to make millions and millions for companies that involve themselves in the practice. These two simple yet powerful words are “Referral Fees”

End article.

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