BODILY INJURY CLAIMS
1999 GIRO Conference Paper
Working Party Members:
Shamit Biswas
Roger Boulton
Phil Ellis
(Chairman)
Mike Falcone
Lis Gibson
Sheree Howard
Hedzer Rispens
Wendy Seago
Ian Senator
SUMMARY:
Bodily injury claims, which impact on a number of classes of insurance, have been subject
to enormous change over the last few years and months. This paper summarises and
considers those changes from an actuarial perspective.
1
Introduction
1.1.1
When we set out to write this paper our aim was to provide a background for
any actuary or student new to the area of bodily injury claims, including:
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introductory education on UK injury law
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discussion of current and future issues and their possible significance
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practical approaches to reserving or rating classes with UK liability
exposures
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sources of current legal information of relevance to actuaries dealing with
classes impacted by injury claims
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summaries of some recent and significant court cases in this area.
1.1.2
As many practitioners will be well aware, this area has been subject to
enormous change over the last few years and months. In this paper we will
discuss the older and more familiar framework, then consider in turn the detail
of the more recent and prospective changes.
1.1.3
Our paper is structured in the following order:
2
The background legal framework, as it affects bodily injury claims in
England and Wales
3
Recent and prospective developments in the legal and social
background
4
The general actuarial implications of bodily injury claims, especially for
pricing and reserving
5
A summary of several legal cases of note, mostly chosen to illustrate
themes and points drawn out in the body of the paper
6
An appendix giving sources of information.
Each of these chapters is self-contained and stands alone. Hence readers
familiar with the legal framework could jump straight to chapter 3, for example.
1.1.4
Given access to market data we would have liked to undertake analyses and
make observations about recent and prospective market t