Voted by The Judging Panel Sponsored by Alexander Forbes Professions.

To win the coveted Insurance Law Firm of the Year award is a great achievement. The partners and staff of Keoghs are thrilled to be recognised in this way.

Keoghs is dedicated to serving the insurance industry. Although a partnership, our business structure is a corporate one. We have adopted a Business Excellence framework, which is key to achieving outstanding levels of performance for our clients.

This award recognises the results achieved by introducing a programme of measures within our Business Excellence framework. These measures have generated real benefits for clients who ask us to handle their litigated insurance claims, including improved settlement time, reduced third-party costs and improving performance against Colossus.

The measures range from reengineering our business processes to introducing staff satisfaction initiatives, which have led to us becoming recognised as a Sunday Times Top 100 Best Company to work for and helping us achieve Investor in People status.

We have also introduced a formal product development process aimed at meeting clients' emerging needs, resulting in the launch of a range of products and services. For example, in fraud prevention, we have pre-action disclosures and costs.

Coupling all these measures, with the efforts we have made to increase our profile, has led to a step change in our market standing.

As evidence, we can demonstrate an exceptional track record of attracting new clients and retaining valued existing clients through their panel reduction exercises. As a result, we are seeing an increase in litigation instructions at a time when the sector is reporting a reduction in litigation.

Highly commended

Blakemores Solicitors

Blakemores is delighted to have been highly commended for is first entry into the Insurance Times Awards, Insurance Law Firm of The Year category.

We believe that this is recognition of all the hard work and effort put in by our specialist team and wish to take this opportunity to thank our clients for their commitment to this new venture.

The accolade is a reflection of the unique nature of our products and services, and ratifies our objective to be in a position to provide a one-stop shop insurance and claims service to insurance companies, brokers and accident management companies.

Not satisfied with the legal expense marketplace, we diversified into other more general insurance products to ensure our brokers were able to offer a wider range of products and services to the fleet, legal and insurance markets. We offer a Total Outsourcing Solution and plans are already in place to expand and diversify the range further still, ensuring Blakemores remains unrivalled in terms of its insurance services.

Our goal for 2005 is to continue to meet and exceed expectations.

Judges' commendation

Hugh James

We congratulate the winner of this most prestigious award. Insurance Times is a well regarded journal in the insurance industry and to be commended by the judges for Insurance Law Firm of the Year two year's running is a significant achievement.

Insurers face many issues including: rising claimants' costs, reduced premium and investment income, and increased awards. Accurate and timely management information is essential for reserving purposes. Our re-engineering of the pre- and post-litigation process has reduced legal cost without compromising quality.

At the same time, we can provide access to tailored and accurate management data with remote access available via secure website links.

Adopting modern technology has enabled us to achieve all of this. In this way, we (the lawyers) are no longer the problem: we are the solution.

We would like to thank Insurance Times for this prestigious commendation.

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