ATE insurers encouraged by post-Jackson take-up

ATE insurers have said they are encouraged by the amount of business they have done in the wake of the Jackson reforms, which commentators suggested could decimate the market.

Michael Lent, underwriting director at Temple Legal Protection, said the indications were “very encouraging” and his company would aim to keep policies “as similar as possible to the past” despite the abolition of recoverability.

Speaking at the Westminster Legal Policy Forum on the impact of the Jackson reforms, Lent said the company had ten years’ experience of the old system to rely on.

Lent said there were advantages in having a system where the client pays the insurance premium, in that what they were offered was no longer “too good to be true”.

He went on: “Clients seem happy to share some of their damages, though only time will tell.

“Premiums will be structured differently. The whole point is that clients have to come early. If people come to us very close to the trial, we won’t insure the case.”

Simon Pinner (pictured), director and co-founder of legal expenses brokerage Box Legal, said the personal injury market was coalescing around solicitors charging fees equivalent to 25 per cent of damages or 21 per cent plus VAT.

Pinner predicted that many solicitors “at the lower end” of the market would insure all their cases. He said QOCs did not cover disbursements, which accounted for 41 per cent of claims by value, or claimants who failed to beat Part 36 offers.

However, he said premium levels for personal injury cases had “dropped rapidly”.

He gave the examples of £80 for an RTA case, £310 for non-motor and between £575-£1050 for an industrial disease case.

“News of ATE’s demise has been much exaggerated,” Pinner concluded.

David Greene, senior partner at Edwin Coe, said there was such a “huge rush” of clients signing conditional fee agreements before 1 April  that he received a text at 11.59 on 31 March.

Greene said it was a “huge hindrance” to his firm that it was no longer able to “slice and splice” DBA agreements, so that only part of a lawyer’s fees were funded in this way.

He added that the MoJ had agreed to review the regulations, but a consultation would not be launched for months or even until next year.