Put simply; it might be. But what you need to know is that are for more likely to under settle your claim for compensation if you settle with the insurers direct. Now, before you start telling me that the insurers have already told you they’ll pay you more by dealing with them direct as they avoid paying out legal fees, don’t bother! We know how the system works, and dealing with the third party insurers directly is very, very dangerous. I’ll explain why.
How to Value a Claim
There is only one way to properly value a claim for personal injury compensation. You must attend a medical appointment with a suitably qualified medico-legal expert. Your own GP does not count! The expert needs to be qualified to prepare a specific medico-legal report.
In most cases when people deal with insurers directly, they do not obtain a medico-legal report. Therefore, any valuations and offers made to you are based entirely on estimations and guesswork. Would you buy a new car based on what it ‘roughly’ might be worth? How do you know you’re not paying over the odds? Would you hand over your hard earned cash to a mechanic when you don’t know how much they will charge you for the work? Better yet, would you let a surgeon operate on you when he/she may or may not be qualified to do so? You can’t leave this stuff to chance.
The point I’m making is that you’re playing with fire by settling a claim based on guesswork. You don’t know how much your claim is worth! What if you end up still suffering 9 months on from settling? You won’t be able to just go back and ask for more money to pay for treatment or for the injury. Once it’s settled, it’s settled.
How to Maximise a Claim
The only way to maximise your claim for compensation is with the representation of a quality personal injury lawyer. It takes the expertise of a quality lawyer to review the evidence and make sure you’re getting the most for your claim. So yes; if you read the above section and the insurers you’re dealing with directly have sent you for a medical appointment, you need to know two things:
- The expert they’ve sent you to see is probably not the best and is probably more “Defendant friendly” based on the ration of work they do.
- Any valuations based on the report are still being made to you by the insurers.
I’ll rephrase this – the company that is responsible for paying you out are a private company whose interests are to keep their profit margins high to satisfy the needs of their shareholders. So they’re not out to pay you the most for your claim; they want to limit how much they spend on paying you out to keep their profit margins maintained.
So how can you trust in the company responsible for paying you out that they will go out of their way to spend time, effort, blood, sweat, and tears and (most importantly) money on making sure you get the most for your claim? You can’t – that’s why personal injury lawyers exist!
There’s an obvious conflict of interest in people having to deal with them directly, which is why you have the choice. In fact, there have been situations where our clients have been offered as little as £500 to settle their claim, and we have got them over £3,000! The insurers often tell people that their offer is the “highest in the bracket for this payout” or similar, but that’s probably wrong! I can tell you now that the minor whiplash injury bracket goes to around £5,000, so if you are suffering from a minor case of whiplash, is their offer that is the “top of the bracket” £5,000? I seriously doubt it…
How to Speed Up a Claim WITH a Lawyer
You’re ultimately faced with a choice: do you want a few hundred pounds or perhaps around £1,500 NOW or do you want around £1,000 MORE or even up to £5,000 for a minor whiplash claim, but wait a little time for it? I know what I’d do. In fact, I’ve done this for my claim, and my first offer is £4,250 to settle. We’re countering at a higher amount, but the point I’m making is that me waiting is allowing me to maximise my claim.
But in any event, with the right lawyer like us, we can do the following to speed up the process:
- Contact you at least every 14 – 21 days so your file is always being worked on; therefore speeding up the process.
- Treat all correspondence on your file as urgent, allowing us to have a 24 hour turnaround on correspondence; allowing for quicker turnaround times.
- The BIG one – get you an interim payment of usually £1,000 if you really badly want money at an earlier stage. That’s way you get the best of both worlds – some money now, and perhaps a lot more later!
Give me a call on 0800 634 75 75 today and let me explain in further detail why dealing with the insurers directly is a very dangerous thing to do. It’s not wise by “cutting out the middlemen lawyer” – lawyers are not middlemen, we are a vital part of making a claim!
Don’t be a fool!
