This entry was posted on Thursday, April 15th, 2010 at 3:27 pm and is filed under Personal Injury Claims. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
What do Claims Assessors do?
Making a personal injury claim does not necessarily need a lawyer. It is also feasible for you to use a professional claims assessor.
Claims assessors, also known as claims managers, are authorised by the government to carry out the business of assessing whether a claim has merit or not. As they are in business for themselves in the same way as solicitors, they will more often than not take up a case on a no win no fee basis.
As claims assessors are government regulated they do need to adhere to strict rules of professional practice. However there are a couple of downsides to using a claims assessing service. Firstly, they are not generally solicitors, nor will they usually have access to a solicitor who would oversee or take charge of the case. Secondly, while they will work on a no win no fee compensation basis they invariably will expect a fee if they win the case. This will normally be a percentage of the compensation they win on your behalf, and could be as much as 50%. When using a no win no fee solicitor their costs would have been claimed from the other side before you are awarded any compensation. If you are prepared to accept this difference, it is likely that they will fight for greater compensation. It is after all in their interests to do so.
Before deciding to use a claims assessing company it is advisable that you seek advice from the Citizens Advice Bureau.
Leave a Reply