Maxwell Scott: Claims fall but premiums do not
The number of new motor injury claims in the first quarter of 2025 fell to an all-time low, new figures have shown.
The news comes after last month’s HM Treasury report that showed the first three years of the whiplash reforms saved policyholders a total of £31 in premiums, rather than the £35 a year the Conservative government had promised.
There were 74,211 motor claims in the first quarter of 2025, down 18% on the 90,565 a year earlier, according to the government’s Compensation Recovery Unit (CRU), which provided the figures to the Association of Consumer Support Organisations (ACSO) following a Freedom of Information request.
By contrast, in the first quarter of 2019, there were more than twice as many claims, 156,791.
Over the whole of 2024, there were 328,637 motor claims registered with the CRU, just over half of the 653,983 in 2019, the last year pre-pandemic.
Indeed, the first quarter of 2025 was the lowest ever for all personal injury claims on CRU figures at 106,113, 16% lower year on year, and a near 50% less than in 2019.
Employer liability claims have also fallen to 9,995, 55% down since the same period in 2019. Clinical negligence claims and public liability claims have also fallen year on year.
Matthew Maxwell Scott, executive director of ACSO, said: “The precipitous fall in motor injury claims should lead to a commensurate drop in motor insurance premiums, but the latest figures from the ABI show that average premiums are still over well over £600 at the end of last year.
“Incredibly, in March the CEO of leading motor insurer Sabre called for prices to go up, despite announcing a doubling of profits and a near 50% increase in shareholder dividends for 2024.
“So claims are right down, prices way up and yet motor insurance complaints to the Financial Ombudsman hit record levels last year, rising by 55% since 2021 to more than 15,200 in 2024.”
He said the post-implementation review of the Civil Liability Act 2018, announced by justice minister Sir Nicholas Dakin last month and expected in the second half of this year, “cannot come soon enough”.
“Ministers must never again be fooled by the insurance industry’s empty promises. While its bosses are cashing in, consumers are struggling to pay the premiums for products which offer less and less.”
Having upset the gravy train for dodgy personal injury claims the next target needs to be the extortionate credit hire industry. But although insurers pretend they want to reduce claims they’re lying – they make their profits from investing premiums, not underwriting, and they conspire against motorists to support the credit hire industry as a means of keeping those premiums high.