BBC Panorama: The Great Car Insurance Swindle

RuthnJasper

Has anyone seen this edition of Panorama (The Great Car Insurance Swindle)?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b012s1xj/Panorama_The_Great_Car_Insurance_Swindle/

Was wondering what people thought of it?

adamc260

I watched it and found it quite interesting although... nothing I didn't come across in my day to day job a few months ago! Still found it interesting to be a 'fly on the wall' instead of the person investigating it.

alistair.long

I thought some things that were talked about may be very unfair.
E.g. getting rid of no win no fee, and replacing it so that the claimant is left with the costs if he loses, or instead of 100% uplift 40% deductions from compensation.

Was I missing something, this seems that if the insurance take the claim all the way to court, instead of the person claiming the full amount he/she will be worse off. Surly if the insurance company pay out later they should be penalised.
e.g. If a person has had a genuine accident and their arm is broken, and the compensation is agreed at £4,000 (for arguements sake). If the insurance pay the £4,000 before hand then the person will not be stressed out and he will be happy.
If the Insurance take the case to court and the person wins then the person will loose 40% £1,600 for wining. How is that fair?
Shouldn't the person get more?

To put it a diffrent way, if someone owes you some money, and they can pay you it all now, but choose to let you sue them. instead of getting them penalised, you loose 40% because you win.

I am not affected as I can litigate in person under litigation in person act, CPR 48.6, but it did seem very unfair.

What the insurance should do is pay the money out unless they have a good enough reason and keep good records with proof e.g. passport. If at a later date fraud is found, the old case can be reopened and the person located so that the money can be claimed back.

e.g. if A and B did a crash for cash, when A is found to be fraudulant at a later date then the old case can be reopened.

dunstonh

I was going to watch it but having seen two Panorama programmes recently on financial services (bank investments and pensions) I decided not to bother as they completely made a pigs ear of both of those. So, I assumed they would miss the point with this one as well.

vax2002

alistair.long wrote: »

What the insurance should do is pay the money out unless they have a good enough reason and keep good records with proof e.g. passport. If at a later date fraud is found, t

The passport is a crown document, making copies is a 5 year jail term.

alistair.long

vax2002 wrote: »

The passport is a crown document, making copies is a 5 year jail term.

I meant make a photocopy of the persons passport so that he/she can be located.

If that is 5 years then why did they use mine to give me a contract mobile?

dunstonh

black & white copies are fine. You are not allowed to make colour copies though.

adamc260

alistair.long wrote: »

I thought some things that were talked about may be very unfair.
E.g. getting rid of no win no fee, and replacing it so that the claimant is left with the costs if he loses, or instead of 100% uplift 40% deductions from compensation.

Was I missing something, this seems that if the insurance take the claim all the way to court, instead of the person claiming the full amount he/she will be worse off. Surly if the insurance company pay out later they should be penalised.
e.g. If a person has had a genuine accident and their arm is broken, and the compensation is agreed at £4,000 (for arguements sake). If the insurance pay the £4,000 before hand then the person will not be stressed out and he will be happy.
If the Insurance take the case to court and the person wins then the person will loose 40% £1,600 for wining. How is that fair?
Shouldn't the person get more?

To put it a diffrent way, if someone owes you some money, and they can pay you it all now, but choose to let you sue them. instead of getting them penalised, you loose 40% because you win.

I am not affected as I can litigate in person under litigation in person act, CPR 48.6, but it did seem very unfair.

What the insurance should do is pay the money out unless they have a good enough reason and keep good records with proof e.g. passport. If at a later date fraud is found, the old case can be reopened and the person located so that the money can be claimed back.

e.g. if A and B did a crash for cash, when A is found to be fraudulant at a later date then the old case can be reopened.

The main arguement is with referral fees and solicitors making more in fee's than a claimant gets in compensation for very simple cases that involve very little work, a medical arranged (at the cost to the TPI), a few letters sent out and job done. Thats the industries complaint. One way to discourage that is to ban ref fees and as said in the program bundle fees in the compensation to discourage non genuine claimants (although I agree to some degree it may be unfair for genuine ones)

alistair.long

adamc260 wrote: »

The main arguement is with referral fees and solicitors making more in fee's than a claimant gets in compensation for very simple cases that involve very little work, a medical arranged (at the cost to the TPI), a few letters sent out and job done. Thats the industries complaint. One way to discourage that is to ban ref fees and as said in the program bundle fees in the compensation to discourage non genuine claimants (although I agree to some degree it may be unfair for genuine ones)

I do agree that the Solicitors make a lot of money, however I am not a Solicitor but it is the fault of the insurance and the Insurance Solicitors that the Claimants Solicitor has much greater bills.

I can only speak about my own claims, I have had my parked car hit a few times. I sued the other party successfully 21 days before going to court. I then asked the other party Solicitor why they decided to pay so late when my evidence had not changed. I had given them all my evidence include witness statements and engineers report.
What do you think there answer was?

The answer was, "if we pay out within the first few weeks then the chance is that the insurance company dont think were fighting for them, we have to show that we are fighting for them even when its a loosing case or we wont get any work from them"

I do agree that solicitor tend to make more, but this is also again down to the insurance fighting the case. I have only to date seen 1 case that was fightable, and the judge knocked the case amount down from £12k to £4k, unfair but still a large sum. 2 old men, 1 was turning into Tesco and had green light to turn right, other driver drove into him and also said he had a green light. Judge desided more in the straight line, as when you are turning you need to make sure its safe, and dont turn into a moving car.

The latest stupid case I saw was a lorry driver had edged out and hit THE SIDE door of a car that was travelling down a road. whos fault will it be. I hope you are agreeing that the car could not hit the side going down a road.
Nevertheless AXA insurance took the fight all the way to court and lost £18k in solicitor costs, + £3k in defence solicitor costs. the actual sum for the claimant was only £2800 car and personal injury.

Another being someone changed lanes and had not indicated, he admited fault but the case was bought to court, and yes again a silly amount of money was lost.

RuthnJasper

Thanks for the opinions - all extremely interesting. I watched it with interest, as my premium went up last year after accruing three years' no claims and I found it a bit odd (and disheartening).

I get a lot of those texts that say 'according to our records you are entitled to claim £.... in respect of the accident you had .. years ago' - they drive me nuts! Plus which, the one time I inadvertently answered a call from one of these companies, the caller was most aggressive when I said I wasn't interested.

I wonder what happened to the folks identified as swindlers in the programme? They didn't say.

Best wishes to all. x

alistair.long

RuthnJasper wrote: »

Thanks for the opinions - all extremely interesting. I watched it with interest, as my premium went up last year after accruing three years' no claims and I found it a bit odd (and disheartening).

I get a lot of those texts that say 'according to our records you are entitled to claim £.... in respect of the accident you had .. years ago' - they drive me nuts! Plus which, the one time I inadvertently answered a call from one of these companies, the caller was most aggressive when I said I wasn't interested.

I wonder what happened to the folks identified as swindlers in the programme? They didn't say.

Best wishes to all. x

The increase in premiums was only £40 in the program (I think),

The people would have been reported to the insurance company so that they didn't get paid.

I dont know if the Police would act as it looks like entrapment,
they didnt get paid so did not benefit (so though may appear wrong they did not defraud anyone, but did intend to)
It would have been better if a camera was left in the yard and cars were crashing into cars, it would have been more entertaining.