10 months on, insurance claim still pending

Awaiting

My partner was driving on the motorway 10 months ago and a driver came from the slip road and hit her on the passenger front side. The driver then drove away whilst my partner stopped at the nearest hard shoulder - the driver returned parking extremely far away so as to not see the number plate and attempted to blame my partner; when she stood her ground and asked for his details he left the scene. Police were contacted and details were taken etc.

We notified the car insurance provider and after a month they said they are waiting on the other party however, the claim was to be decided on our favour. I chased up a few weeks later and they said the other party have appealed and they are going for a 50/50 liability. I kept chasing up every month and the insurance company say they are waiting for the other party. When I called in April they said they have passed it to an independent body to make a decision, I called yesterday and they say said the independent body have asked for more information from the other party and they are still awaiting information. The other party has a record of not providing information, so my question is how long do these things normally take? Is there a time limit? Is there any body we can raise this too because at this rate it will never get resolved and my NCB is on hold. 

Summary: Claim ongoing for 10 months, no real progress. What can be done?

Thank you in advance for all your help! 

Sandtree

The law of limitations, assuming no injuries, is 6 years... injuries reduce it to 3 years. Technically thats only to issue proceedings... once proceedings are issued it can take years longer if there is a real need for it.

Non-injury cases tend to go down one of two paths... straight through in which case its 3-6 months buy the time of all the back and forth or it will take a lot longer because one party is very slow, often true with company vehicles. 

I am surprised that they have decided to go to arbitration without having had sight of the third party's version of events and not giving you an opportunity to comment on them first. 10 months is always disappointing but with insures backlogs sometimes running into months and non-litigated cases being low priority its by no means exceptional.

Awaiting

Sandtree said:

The law of limitations, assuming no injuries, is 6 years... injuries reduce it to 3 years. Technically thats only to issue proceedings... once proceedings are issued it can take years longer if there is a real need for it.

Non-injury cases tend to go down one of two paths... straight through in which case its 3-6 months buy the time of all the back and forth or it will take a lot longer because one party is very slow, often true with company vehicles. 

I am surprised that they have decided to go to arbitration without having had sight of the third party's version of events and not giving you an opportunity to comment on them first. 10 months is always disappointing but with insures backlogs sometimes running into months and non-litigated cases being low priority its by no means exceptional.

Would you be able to recommend anything to speed it up bar calling frequently?

Sandtree

Awaiting said:

Sandtree said:

The law of limitations, assuming no injuries, is 6 years... injuries reduce it to 3 years. Technically thats only to issue proceedings... once proceedings are issued it can take years longer if there is a real need for it.

Non-injury cases tend to go down one of two paths... straight through in which case its 3-6 months buy the time of all the back and forth or it will take a lot longer because one party is very slow, often true with company vehicles. 

I am surprised that they have decided to go to arbitration without having had sight of the third party's version of events and not giving you an opportunity to comment on them first. 10 months is always disappointing but with insures backlogs sometimes running into months and non-litigated cases being low priority its by no means exceptional.

Would you be able to recommend anything to speed it up bar calling frequently?

The blockage is at the other side evidently so not much you can do.

The only thing you can ask your insurers is how they are chasing the third party's representatives. In my day, before insurers used email for claims, half the time a policyholder called the technician would just send a chaser letter at the end of the call. At the other side it gets put to the very back of the queue unless it mentions litigation and in the worst cases it can actually put the whole case to the back of the queue.

Our office wasn't too bad but we had to help another office that had a 5 month backlog and you'd open up the file and find there are 5 identical chaser letters from the third party insurer with just a different date on them.

I'd certainly be encouraging them to phone the TPI for an update but in some cases they have to phone the same number as policyholders and cannot/won't sit in a queue for 30 minutes to speak to an agent... a good black book of telephone numbers for the back office claims handlers was always a valuable thing.