There’s no evidence the market has turned despite a decline in the number of claims going through the MoJ portal, according to experts

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The number of motor personal injury claims going through the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) road traffic accident (RTA) claims portal is falling, but that does not mean the market has finally turned, according to experts.

The number of motor PI claims in the claims portal has fallen for four of the last five months.

The MoJ received 71,000 RTA claims during January 2016, compared with 77,393 for the same period in 2015 – an 8.3% decrease in claims volumes.

But DAC Beachcroft motor claims partner Peter Allchorne says this does not represent a turning of the market, and that more still needs to be done to ensure the market is as efficient as it can be.

“There is no evidence of a consistent drop in claims volumes,” he says. “The fact remains that we have a frequency problem compared with the rest of Europe, which needs to be addressed. While the government’s reform programme has to date reduced costs, there is still ‘fat’ in the system.”

LV= claims director Martin Milliner says the trends in claims volumes shows that the market has reached a peak, but added: “I don’t necessarily think there is enough to say there is any evidence to support a reduction [in claims volumes], but we have reached a plateau,” he says. 

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