A database of personal injury (PI) claims, settlements and awards designed to cut delays has received support from a galaxy of prominent figures in the insurance and legal professions.

The system, Intelligent Quantum (IQ) created by Wire, based in Brighton, is the first interactive nationwide claims database on the internet.

With thousands of cases logged into the system, IQ will provide insurers, solicitors, and eventually it is hoped, the UK civil courts, with a unified PI information and settlement system to speed payments to victims.

Insurance executives would access the database via the internet, feed in the details of a case, and obtain an estimate of its potential value.

Armed with this data, insurers can negotiate with claims solicitors to arrive at equitable settlements involving quick payouts.

Some of the UK's largest insurance companies, including Aon, are involved in IQ, which sponsored the core research and the prototype.

Swiss Re, Royal & Sun Alliance, Hastings Direct, and Service Policies are among many considering the system.

Alan Burtonshaw, client manager at Swiss Re, said: "For insurers the advantages are clear. IQ can forecast accurate projections of injury claims by making use of past data such as previous claims and social inflation."

Equally upbeat was Alastair Speare-Cole, an executive director, non-marine division of Aon Group, said: "IQ allows insurers for the first time to benchmark serious injury claims against the market. This should lead to more consistent, faster and fairer award settlements." Currently, the most serious injury cases take an average of six years to settle.

For one leading industry figure, Nick Golden, director, risk and reinsurance at Royal & Sun Alliance, it was the opportunity to speed up settlements that was most important.

"It is in the interest of insurers and customers that there is a greater degree of certainty surrounding the calculation of awards by the courts for bodily injury."

Real advantages
Jeremy King, reinsurance consultant with Aon Group, agrees that the system has real advantages.

"It can cope with all bodily injuries, not just serious ones. IQ will reveal precisely what the market is settling each claim for," he said.

"As a result, many aspects of social inflation will become quantifiable for the first time."

David Gundlach, managing director of Hastings Direct and another fan, said IQ could help insurers identify efficient solicitors and those who "are prone to dragging things out".

IQ's software allows managers to monitor and analyse the value of their claims portfolios with far greater precision than previously possible.

For several managers, this was critical. Beverley Shreeve, active underwriter at Lloyd's underwriting syndicate Service Policies stated: "The system is an excellent detailed basis for recording and benchmarking large injury claims.

"We think it's a marvellous tool for assessing how well managers are assessing and reserving their cases. All claims managers will want one!"

Progress on developing the IQ concept has been rapid, says Jeremy King. "As insurers have been more willing to share their data in recent months," he said.

Corporate implementation studies at insurers are nearing completion. When fully operational, the IQ system will undertake a multiplicity of tasks.

Subscribers will have access not simply to a detailed structured database but to a live, working mine of information.

The legal brain behind the scheme has been Douglas Stewart, a director of Wire and a personal injuries solicitor.

"Using advanced statistical tools," said Mr Stewart, "the courts, solicitors and insurers will immediately be able to evaluate what, for example, a 28-year-old financial adviser injured in a car accident, living in Milton Keynes with three children and now completely paralysed, might be expected to receive in compensation.

"Early payout then becomes possible."

Rowan Douglas, Wire's managing director and himself a former Lloyd's underwriter said: "Each claim within the IQ database has over 60 fields of information - covering location, cause of accident, severity of injury and claimant occupation."

Armed with this data, insurers would be able to negotiate with claims solicitors and find a quick and equitable settlement.

Settlement time cut
Robert Wilkinson, of Drake Insurance, forecasts that "between one and two years could be cut from average payout times". He believes that significant savings could be derived from the database for insurers.

Insurance executives will be able to obtain an estimate of a case's potential value and "plant an embryo", or input preliminary data which, later on, will "grow" as more facts emerge.

Just as important are plans to integrate IQ into the UK's civil court network. Last November IQ was presented to the Civil Justice Council, headed by Lord Woolf.

David Gladwell, Head of Civil Justice Division at the Lord Chancellor's department, was impressed. "In future, databases such as IQ will provide an extraordinarily valuable tool - and provide a much more sophisticated basis for negotiation for all those involved in PI --without excluding judicial discretion," he said.

Wire's Douglas Stewart underlined the systems' benefits.

With new "heads" of claim, or means of calculating claims, constantly changing, the IQ can help the insurance industry unravel an administrative nightmare.

"The Wire IQ system revalues all pending claims at a stroke," said Stewart. "This saves a huge amount of time and expense."

Accessing statistics
Statistics are another prominent IQ feature. For the first time, insurers will be able to search the system for answers to many pressing questions.

Stewart explained: "Much of the fog surrounding PI is due to the fact that around 95% of cases are settled out of court, and that very few of the five per cent of decisions are reported."

But, using IQ, exceptionally detailed trends in PI claims can be quantified.

These include the type and duration of claims and regional variations in settlements.

But will IQ make PI lawyers poor? Stewart thinks not. "Firstly, everyone involved in personal injury litigation has to understand that the compensation system is intended to ensure that the victim gets the correct amount quickly.

"Secondly, the introduction of technology does not mean that claims do not need to be investigated - whether on liability or the underlying facts. Costs may fall, but not profitability."

Finally, Douglas said: "We've turbocharged the tradition of legal precedent, turned old claims into data and created a price-discovery mechanism between the parties which can meet the wishes of victim, insurer and judiciary."

And the futureNULL Wire is developing the concept for other branches of law, where costs, decisions and settlements are ripe for analysis.