Telephone Mediation Scheme Achieves Cost Effective Settlements in Injury Claims.
1st October 2007 – InterResolve, the independent claims resolution specialist, has launched its Legacy Claims Scheme, a low-cost, high capacity telephone mediation service to assist insurers in resolving personal injury claims over a year old.
A successful pilot scheme with AXA Insurance, running since April this year, has already showed an average settlement time of just seven weeks from when telephone mediation was offered. This compares with an average settlement time of between eighteen months to two years for the existing adversarial claims process.
Under the pilot, the average cost of telephone mediation was £175 per party with a settlement rate of 88%. Typically, these mediations took less than one hour and involved both liability and quantum issues across a wide range of values.
An important differentiator of the InterResolve service is that it is geared to handle a high capacity of claims at very low cost.
Commenting on the impact of its telephone mediation service, Peter Ashdown-Barr, Chief Executive of InterResolve, said: “Initial results from the pilot with AXA have been impressive. Cases which have not seen progress for a long time have been settled quickly and cost-efficiently to the satisfaction of both sides.
“What our service demonstrates is that providing a safe and confidential process can lead to seemingly intractable issues being resolved.”
AXA is now increasing the volume of cases for InterResolve’s telephone mediation. David Fisher, Liability Claims Technical Manager at AXA Insurance, commented: “InterResolve’s use of telephone mediation in these cases has delivered tangible benefits to us and claimants alike and it is very clear that this approach has an important role to play in the settlement of large volumes of outstanding PI cases right across the industry.”
Other insurers and corporate customers currently using InterResolve’s services are now looking to introduce similar pilots.
With the cost of formal mediation frequently being cited by the insurance industry as disproportionate, particularly in low value injury claims, InterResolve’s telephone scheme now makes cost-efficient mediation easily accessible for both insurers and lawyers. It is also timely in view of the current government proposals for reducing costs and streamlining the claims process under the Ministry of Justice consultation paper.
ENDS
For further information contact:
Alex Wise, Concise Public Relations on Tel: 020 7100 3960 or 07710 665 615
