I have been told that as a company whenever you recieve a claim for a personal injury you do not acknowledge it but send it to your insurance brokers and let them deal direct,
is this industry standard?
recently i recieved a letter for a claim and did just that
now 3 letters later from the claimants solicitors stating they still havent heard from me and i am in breach of protocol am i doing something wrong.
how do other companies do things any help please

Yes, it's normal to pass it to the insurer and have them deal with it.

Stevie40 is spot on with his advice about what seems to be a communications hitch involving the insurance broker/insurer which has led to the three letters from the claimant's solicitor.

As regards claims letters generally, there's probably no harm in a recipient sending a brief note to the sender in order to 1) acknowledge receipt of the letter, and 2) advise that the letter has been forwarded to the recipient's insurer. In the case of recipients which are part of large organisations, e.g. a school within a local authority, large organisations tend to have their own insurance depts which liaise with external insurers and claims assessors.

The senders of claims letters are well aware of the system and that claims should be dealt with by insurers. Some senders have the courtesy to suggest that claims letters should be forwarded to insurers. However, some claims letters seem to be couched to intimidate/frighten the initial recipients by the way in they are worded and what they ask for or suggest should exist, e.g. copies of written risk assessments for situations which wouldn't normally warrant such documents. Therefore, recipients should be aware of this aspects, and that they certainly should not respond to any allegations or questions posed in claims letters.

Actually, I take a slightly different approach, which I suggest might avoid such a problem. I generally consider it to be a simple courtesy to reply to someone that has written to 'me' and I see no reason why you shoudn't do so in this case. If I receive a claim or a potential claim for a personal injury claim then I respond to the person that has written in, acknowledging receipt of their letter an informing them that I have passed this on to our insurer; and I provide the details of the insurer as well.

I then write to the insurer (and/or pass through to the insurance officer) the original letter and my response.

I believe that this is both courteous to the originator and meets the requirements of the protocol.

The brokers who handled our insurance had very clear guidance on this matter

Under no circumstances were we to acknowledge any claims from claimants legal advisors or to enter into any correspondence with the claimants.

On receipt of any claims letter this was passed to the brokers and also to advise the brokers by email.

I don't think it is about being risk adverse, it's more about time. If a letter is sent and you get it the next day and you post an acknowledgement the same day and post it to your insures the same day, their 12 weeks start from the point you acknowledge ( so they get just under the 12 weeks). But if you just send it to them and they acknowledge they can take advantage of the extra time and have 14 weeks with change allowing for post. They I guess will also like to point out any significant omissions as noted from my previous post.

Yes the broker & insurer from the last company I worked for also insisted we did not acknowledge, and providing they do all is fine. Despite their insistence on acknowledging, I had to chase them more than once. (claims from before I was H&S Manager, I would like to point out)

Stevie40's comments above seem to explain why insurers tell their clients not to acknowledge receipt of claims letters. As mentioned earlier, some claims letters tend to be phrased so that they intimidate/frighten recipients, possibly with the aim of provoking a direct responses which include information which helps the claimants. Like Stevie40, I can't see a problem with a very brief acknowledgement letter as a matter of courtesy. (Perhaps I'm just a fiftysomething old curmudgeon, but it seems that courtesy these days is becoming an increasingly rare commodity.) However, if there's a chance that even a few recipients might include inappropriate information in their acknowledegments, it's understandable why some or many insurers tell their clients not to respond at all.

On a wider note about claims, in my employer's experience the receipt of a claim is sometimes the first indication of anyone, whether an employee, visitor or trespasser, having been injured - and sometimes quite a while after the alleged circumstances occurred.

Also, in relation to the UK claims culture, does anyone know if figures are available for the number of claims which are started compared with the number which eventually prove successful? If people generally could be told of the apparent contrast between the two figures and understand why a significant proportion of claims founder, there might be a chance of slowly changing commonly held misperceptions about claims.

You can find the pre-action protocols for personal injury claims from the following link:

http://www.justice.gov.u...s/protocols/prot_pic.htm