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 have the court-case potential. 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.
There were 689,000 personal injury claims made in 2001-02, and with the latest study claiming that this will rise by just 2.1% by 2007, experts believe that the UK will not follow America into the litigation jungle.
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.
