Pienaar: Improving the process of law
The first group of credit hire claims have been processed by a pioneering arbitration pilot – a partnership between a law firm, an insurer and a legaltech firm.
Willie Pienaar, chief executive of Nuvalaw, said the quantum of seven credit hire cases from law firm Winn Solicitors and insurer esure had been resolved using Nuvalaw’s Interact platform.
Mr Pienaar said 15 claims, each for sums of less than £25,000, reached the platform last month.
Arbitrators are either sitting or retired deputy district judges with experience of personal injury claims.
He said a second pilot, also with Winn Solicitors but with a different insurer, and involving 20 cases, would begin this week.
Mr Pienaar said he was in talks with two other insurers about further batches of cases.
“Your ability to get to agreement is much quicker on the pilot. There are no appearance fees, your preparation is much reduced, but you still get the same quality of outcome and there is a massive saving in costs.”
Mr Pienaar said the average time taken from referral to award was eight days on the pilot scheme, and the Interact platform charged fees of between £350 and £500 – much lower than the courts.
He qualified as an advocate in South Africa and worked as a mediator and arbitrator for two decades. “I love the law, but not the process of the law.”
He said Nuvalaw was a UK company, headquartered in London where there were two full-time members of staff and with eight more in South Africa.
Nuvalaw currently worked with eight UK-based arbitrators, but there was “massive capacity” for that to grow, while maintaining the quality of awards. “Our awards should at least be comparable to what you get in court.”
Although Interact did not currently use artificial intelligence (AI) for the credit hire cases, he saw a role for it, as AI could “support people and make them more efficient”. However, it would not have a role on the award side.
One further advantage of using the platform to resolve credit hire cases was that it produced management information and could deliver a “full dataset back to clients”. If you went to court, you “do not get the data”.
His ultimate goal was for “more and more claims” to settle before arbitration. “The aim is not to increase arbitration, but for the early resolution of claims.
“We have started to build up a track record of trust and a dataset that gives us a good grounding to make predictions.”
Adam Thorpe, head of the litigation team at Winn Solicitors, commented: “By voluntarily moving disputed cases out of the court system and into independent arbitration, the parties are demonstrating a practical way of easing the pressure on the courts and supporting the Ministry of Justice’s wider objectives around alternative dispute resolution.
“This is exactly the type of market-led initiative regulators have been calling for. Improving transparency, consistency and fairness without the need for prescriptive intervention clearly shows that claims firms are listening.”
Mark O`Donnell, third-party indemnity lead at esure, added: “The potential of arbitration in the credit hire area is clear and I’m proud of the work done so far to get this off the ground.”