Tracing Insurers in Personal Injury Cases
Searching for Employers Liability Insurers
Many occupational diseases often manifest themselves many years after exposure. This is most apparent in asbestos related cases where the illness often only becomes apparent thirty or forty years after exposure. By the time workers find that they have a disease the organisation they worked for may no longer exist. However that should not exclude them being able to claim. In such circumstances it is often possible to locate either or both the employers’ liability and public liability insurers of the company.
Most solicitors will know how to trace the insurers but some do not. This advice is intended to help affiliates should they get any inquiries regarding this.
In order to locate the insurers you or the solicitors should consider the following courses of action:
· Check any company files. It is surprising how many firms have the information being sought within their own closed client files. If your solicitors set up internal procedures to ensure that all EL or PL insurance policy details are logged for all relevant defendants this can help considerably in the long term.
· The Association of British Insurers operate a system whereby they will undertake to attempt to trace the insurers of a company. Go to: http://www.abi.org.uk/ELCode/admin/AEDUpdate.asp and submit your enquiry online. The information required by the ABI is: the name of the employer, address or at least an indication of the geographical location, the nature of the business in which the employer was involved, details of the employee, type of illness or injury to which the claim relates and any other relevant information you may hold.
· Obtain a full company search from Companies House. It is sometimes possible to trace the identity of insurers by directly contacting the directors listed in the final documents files with Companies House and asking those directors to recall details of their insurers.
· If your solicitor is a member of APIL (and the vast majority of Personal Injury solicitors are) then they will have access to a website of past enquiries made by APIL members in the past. The solicitor can also place a request for assistance in the APIL newsletter.
· If you think you know the name of the insurer or syndicate at Lloyds which provided insurance cover, submit your enquiry direct to them. An enquiry to a Lloyd’s Syndicate should be sent to:
[Syndicate name]
Lloyd’s
One Lime Street
London EC3M 7HA.
· If the insurance may have been provided by a syndicate but you do not know which one, submit your enquiry electronically to the ABI as above.
· For American companies, contact: MEA Investigative Services Inc. Web: http://www.meainvestigations.com/ or email: info@meainvestigations.com . This company searches US databases on a no policy found, no fee basis.
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