Up to speed

On 30 April 2010, Ministry of Justice reforms will be introduced to streamline the compensation system for low-value RTA personal injury claims (between £1,000 and £10,000). Representatives from across the legal and insurance industries have been working in close collaboration to develop an electronic portal to support this new process.

The claims process for as many as half a million individuals every year should be improved by new reforms being brought in by the MoJ to enable faster agreement on liability and payment of low-value RTA injury claims. Insurers currently have between 60 and 90 days to accept or deny liability for such personal injury claims '“ under the new regulations this timeframe will be reduced to just 15 working days.

The process will provide a single data point for all parties involved in RTA PI claims and significantly reduce duplication and potential disputes over data. The new process will be supported by an electronic portal, the development of which has been managed by Insurance Database Services Limited (IDSL) and a Project Steering Group comprising representatives from across the legal and insurance industries. This portal will provide claimant lawyers with the swift, electronic exchange of all relevant claim information and related documentation '“ including medical reports '“ with insurers. Key decisions will be communicated more quickly and duplication of effort and operational costs significantly reduced.

The system is very easy to use and is not expected to impact on the resource required by claimant lawyers, who will now be in a position to provide the information currently supplied in hard copy in electronic format. They will also be able to receive responses back electronically from insurers and compensators within set timeframes, providing an opportunity to further improve resource planning and allocation.

The new process involves two definitive key stages, with an optional third stage applicable in the event of a disagreement on quantum. During stage one, the claimant lawyer completes the claim notification form online and sends it to the insurer, who may admit or deny liability '“ again, via the portal '“ within 15 working days. If any of the fields are not completed correctly, it will not be forwarded, thus eliminating inputting errors and speeding up the process. There is a fixed fee for this phase (if the insurer fails to respond to the stage one claim within the 15 working day time frame, the claim will fall out of the system and into the current predictable costs scheme).

Following the acceptance of liability, the claimant lawyer will pull together all relevant expert medical reports and scan and attach them into a settlement pack which is sent complete to the insurer via the portal. This information can be revised and passed between the two parties until agreement is reached.

The screens incorporate certain guidelines relating to costs associated with PI claims to help users complete this stage.

Medical reports are not saved in the system as they are deemed to be personal and sensitive information. The insurer/compensator has 15 working days to agree the settlement figures and a further 20 working days are allowed to negotiate counter offers. There is a further fixed fee for this second stage of the process.

Stage three only comes into effect when liability has been accepted but the relevant parties cannot agree a settlement figure. For this phase of the process, the electronic portal enables the claimant lawyer to produce a court proceedings pack, at which point the most recent offer and counter offer are forwarded to a district judge for adjudication. Fixed costs are payable for either a paper or an oral hearing. Copies of the CNF and offers made via the portal can be printed for submission to the quantum hearing.

Accessing the portal

Claimant lawyers can access the portal by one of two methods, dependent on their IT infrastructure. First, via a web browser based access to a secure web server, allowing the completion of agreed electronic forms online and submission for transfer to insurers and compensators. Utilising this option only requires access to the internet using standard browser software such as Internet Explorer (version 6 or above), Mozilla Firefox or Opera. The web browser will accommodate saving partial information pending completion of all details and sending a full CNF (claim notification form) to the appropriate insurer.

The second option for claimant lawyers is via 'application-to-application' interfaces with the web server from their internal claims management systems. Standard XML-based messages have been developed to cover all required data fields and include necessary validation rules to ensure the completeness and accuracyof the data content of the messages. Claimant lawyers who adopt this method of interfacing with the electronic portal will need to review their own system data and plan how best to extract it to send through the portal to the defendant insurer or compensator.

Preparing for the deadline

Plenty of support is available to claimant lawyers preparing for the new reform deadline of 30 April 2010. As part of its project management and system implementation coordination role, IDSL is keeping all relevant parties appraised on the progress of the system development and helping them interface with their own in-house systems and processes.

Once the reforms come into operation, all claimant lawyers will need to have access to the portal in order to complete the process, so anyone not yet signed up should do so right away '“ firms need to register and nominate a contact to act as system administrator. For further information about the new personal injury reforms process, how to sign up or to receive an administrator's pack, visit www.rtapiclaimsprocess.org.uk.

With less than a month to go, some 900 of those lawyers involved in PI claims have already registered and are using the training and familiarisation portal.

Those without access to the portal after 30 April will have to register and train on the system before they are able to service these cases.

With the introduction of the new process, we anticipate a sea change in the processing and conduct around these claims. This is the first time that lawyers and insurers have joined forces, adopting a common electronic portal to deal with legal issues which places the claimant firmly back at the centre of the claims process.