Pricing of Personal Injury Compensation Claim work by Grigor & Young / Moray Claims where the claim funding is through “After the Event” Insurance.
At Grigor & Young / Moray Claims, we handle some personal injury compensation claims under legal aid.
We also handle some claims under “Before the Event” (BTE) legal expenses insurance.
You’ll find a general discussion of personal injury claim pricing on our Moray Claims website.
The information in this article is about personal injury claims we deal with under “After the Event” (ATE) Insurance.
ATE insurance covers most of the “no win-no fee” cases we handle.
Our stated aim is to help you with your personal injury compensation claim in such a way that our services cost you nothing if your claim fails and nothing if your claim succeeds. In other words, if your claim is successful, you keep 100% of the compensation agreed with the opponent or awarded by the court.
If you do not qualify for legal aid and did not have relevant BTE insurance in place before your accident/injury, we’ll be running your claim no win-no fee, backed by ATE Insurance.
It can be difficult to get your head around ATE insurance.
We need the insurance in place because, with no win-no fee, it’s not enough if your own solicitor says you won’t have to pay anything to them if the claim fails. If your claim fails after a court action has been raised, there may be costs awarded against you. In other words, you might have liability to pay the other side’s legal costs.
ATE Insurance guards you against the risk of having to pay the other side’s legal costs.
The insurance will pay out to meet the other side’s expenses if the case is unsuccessful and the court makes a finding that you have to pay costs.
As a firm, we have been involved with ATE insurance for personal injury claims for over 20 years. We’ve obtained ATE insurance for our clients from various insurance providers at different times during that period.
Most recently, the ATE insurance we have taken out for clients has been through ARAG Insurance.
We have been obtaining this insurance through ARAG since September 2015.
As mentioned above, the way ATE insurance works is not always as you might expect.
For each type of claim, there are different policy premiums (i.e. different costs payable for the insurance).
Types of claim include road traffic, accidents at work, and occupiers’ liability claims.
Road Traffic Accident claims are least risky for ATE insurers and those premiums are lowest.
On the other hand, public liability, occupiers’ liability and employers’ liability claims carry greater risk of failing and the ATE insurer having to pay out on a costs claim, so those premiums are higher.
But, if any ATE-covered claim fails, the premium does not have to be paid.
How is that possible?
The premium is itself ‘insured’.
This is not a ‘normal’ kind of insurance. Having an ‘insured’ premium means you can successfully claim on the ATE policy (because your personal injury claim has failed and you have adverse costs to pay) without having paid any premium.
If the claim is successful, the premium does have to be paid to ARAG and this is where ‘pricing’ comes in.
In many cases, G&Y / Moray Claims absorb the policy premium cost out of the scale fee or judicial expenses we recover from the other side – in addition to your compensation – as part of the claims settlement.
The recent introduction of Qualified One-way Costs-Shifting for Scottish personal injury court actions has changed the landscape for personal injury claims.
On average, personal injury claims carry less risk of you being found liable to pay the other side’s costs. This is because the normal rule for personal injury claimants has been ‘shifted’. If your claim fails, you won’t have to pay the other side’s costs except in exceptional circumstances (e.g. you lied about important parts of the claim).
The change to a QOCS-based system has caused ARAG to review their policy premium structure.
In summary, while we will continue to guarantee that you keep 100% of your compensation for lower value awards and settlements, we will expect you to contribute to the cost of the insurance (i.e. a pay a proportion of the cost) where the claim succeeds at a higher level (usually, at compensation levels of £100,000 or above).
In the tables below, we have summarised the ATE insurance premiums which apply to different types of injury claim. Insurance Premium Tax (IPT) is payable on all the basic premiums at 12%.
The amount that must be paid for the insurance premium varies depending on the amount of compensation
So, for example, if you have an injury claim resulting from a road traffic accident which settles for £3,500, the ATE insurance premium is £78.40 (claim value £1 to £100,000). On the other hand, if the final compensation figure is £120,000, the premium is £1,064 (claim value £100,001 +).
In the tables below, we have highlighted those situations where we will absorb all the premium cost (so you receive 100%) and those where you agree to pay a proportion of the premium.
***NOTE that these arrangements do not apply to medical negligence cases or personal injury claims where we run the court action in the Court of Session with your agreement.
At the beginning of a claim, it is usually difficult to estimate what the final amount of your compensation will be.
It will depend – among other things – on how seriously you have been injured, how long it takes you to recover from your injuries and whether there is a risk that you might not be able to prove your claim either at all or in part.
Your solicitor will be able to give you a ‘ballpark’ idea of the impact of these factors even at the outset of your claim, though it will be necessary to review and revisit the analysis as your claim progresses and more evidence and information becomes available.
Agreeing these parameters for payment of the premium at the start of your claim means there are no surprises or “difficult conversations” with us about the financial outcome later on in our work for you.
In summary, while we will continue to guarantee*** that you keep 100% of your compensation for lower value awards and settlements, we ask you to contribute to the cost of the insurance (i.e. a pay a proportion of the cost) where the claim succeeds at a higher level (usually, at compensation levels of £100,000 or above).
***NOTE that these arrangements do not apply to medical negligence cases or personal injury claims where we run the court action in the Court of Session with your agreement.
These proportions mean that the highest percentage you will lose from your compensation is £752.80 / £25,001 x 100 = 3%
This outcome remains considerably better than the 20 – 25% you would typically lose from your compensation with a successful no win-no fee arrangement.
Summary
Most people don’t think about the financial outcome of their personal injury claim in any detail at the outset.
But we encourage you to think about it!
Depending on how your claim is financed – legal aid, BTE or ATE – the final calculation of the amount of your compensation you actually receive may vary.
With Grigor & Young / Moray Claims, the ATE premiums involved in personal injury claims can vary a lot. Because of that, we wanted to set them out for you in full so this element of our pricing is as transparent as possible.
ATE Cases Pricing Structure
1. Motor accident / Road Traffic Accident
| Compensation amount | Basic Premium | Premium with IPT | How much premium you pay |
| £1k – £100k | £70.00 | £78.40 | NIL |
| £100k+ | £950.00 | £1,064 | NIL |
2. Public liability and Occupiers’ liability
| Compensation amount | Basic Premium | Premium with IPT | How much premium you pay |
| £1k – £10k | £385 | £431.20 | NIL |
| £10k – £25k | £550 | £616 | NIL |
| £25k – £100k | £1,565 | £1,752.80 | £752.80 |
| £100k+ | £3,000 | £3,360 | £1,680 (i.e. 50% of £3,360) |
3. Employer’s liability
| Compensation amount | Basic premium | Premium with IPT | How much premium you pay |
| £1k – £10k | £305 | £341.60 | NIL |
| £10k – £25k | £495 | £554.40 | NIL |
| £25k – £100k | £815 | £912.80 | NIL |
| £100k+ | £3,000 | £3,360 | £1,680 (i.e. 50% 0f £3,360) |
How we can help
We hope the details of pricing we have provided relative to ATE-backed no win-no fee personal injury claims is clear.
If there is anything in this article which is not clear or if you have any questions, please get in touch with us. All enquiries are free of charge and without obligation. Price is not the only basis for choosing a solicitor but it is an important factor so we hope you will ask if anything is not clear.
Call Peter or Marie at Grigor & Young in Elgin on 01343 544077 or send us a Free Online Enquiry.
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