Fears of a US-style compensation culture taking hold of the UK insurance market are unfounded, according to Datamonitor.
There are over 1.5m slips, trips and falls in the UK each year that could go to court.
However the number of actual claims made in 2001-02 was just 689,000 - suggesting that the UK insurance market is not heading for a U.S. style love of lawsuits.
Encouragingly for UK insurers, compensation awards are much lower here than in the U.S. Suggesting that a sense of Britishness is preventing many claimants from going to court, the study claimed stringent health & safety laws have halted the rise in workplace accidents.
While the number of claims has risen, it is the spiralling cost of compensation that is causing the biggest headache to insurers.
Datamonitor insurance analyst Liz Hartley said: "Datamonitor forecasts that the cost of claims could be as much as £11bn by 2007, meaning a £7.3bn increase from 2002, adding further pounds to the cost of insurance."
