By this, I’m talking about where an insurer approaches you directly to settle a claim, but you are wise enough to get a lawyer and make a claim the proper way. If you do this, could you end up with less compensation with the lawyer?
It’s never guaranteed whether the pre-medical offer could be beaten, but here are the facts surrounding pre-medical offers based on industry knowledge and our clients own experiences…
Why make a low offer?
Pre-medical offers are offers made by insurers to save themselves money. An insurance company’s duty is to their shareholders – that’s to maximise profits to maintain their shareholders return on investment. To do this, they need to save money; and to save money, they need to pay out as little as possible to accident victims. So don’t let them fool you in to thinking that they are doing this to get you a quick settlement right away.
In a whiplash compensation claim, where pre-medical offers are extremely common, we see offers of as little as £500. The average minor whiplash claim is worth statistically around £2,500. So even if they offer you the “standard grand” of £1,000 and then increase a little to £1,250 after a bit of clever bartering on your part, you still may be losing out.
Other than being low, why else are they bad?
You should only settle your claim when your injuries are completely resolved. Otherwise you have no way of knowing how long you are going to suffer for. If you settle for £1,000 and then you are still suffering 9 months on from the accident, you’ve under settled your claim.
The offers they provide are based on pure guesswork. Unless you have attended an appointment with a suitably qualified medico-legal expert, there is no evidence to confirm how much your claim is worth. The only way we can value a claim is with proper medical evidence. Without it, no one knows how much your claim is worth.
Once you settle, you’ve settled!
Once you have accepted a claim in full and final settlement, it’s done – you can’t go back for more if you realise you are still suffering months down the line and you realise that you have under settled the claim. You should only ever accept an offer when you are fully healed; otherwise you are playing with fire by accepting an amount before you know how long you are going to suffer for. What if there is nerve damage or a permanent issue that will not fully resolve? Accepting a low offer too early could leave you under compensated for life.
So can you get less with a lawyer?
As I said, it’s not guaranteed. But hopefully if you have read this far, you understand the potentially serious consequences of settling early direct. It’s very rare that a pre medical offer isn’t beaten, so it’s down to you whether you take the risk or not.
In summary:
- Pre medical offers are predicatively very low.
- Accepting a pre medical offer is settling your claim based on guesswork.
- Once it’s settled, it’s settled! You can’t go back for more.
You should always do things the proper way and get an injury lawyer to deal with the case.
