For solicitors conducting Civil Litigation
“To Act in the best interests of each client”
“To inform the client about the likelihood of having to pay opponents costs and disbursements”
All litigation comes with risk.
If your client doesn’t have any pre-existing Legal Expenses Insurance in place, you should offer your client the opportunity to purchase ATE Insurance.
Whilst clients who win their cases are not likely to complain, the same cannot be said for a disappointed client who loses their case or fails to beat a Part 36 offer.
Delegated Authority is where the Solicitor is provided with a criteria for cases which are acceptable to insurers so that a policy can be obtained automatically via a portal without recourse to the insurer. This speeds up the process and eliminates the need for insurers to review each case.
This product is most suited to Solicitors running a volume of lower value claims.
More Affordable Premiums
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Volume Cases
Individually Assessed Premiums means that the merits of each case must be reviewed by the insurer so that a premium can be calculated according to each individual risk.
The process of underwriting each risk can be time consuming
This product is most popular for one-off high value cases.
Premiums Assessed for Individual Risks.
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One Off Cases
What does Delegated Authority mean?
Delegated Authority means that authority is delegated to your firm to ensure that the underwriters requirements are met before placing a risk on cover.
What does this mean?
This means that you do not need to send the insurer a proposal form or the full details of every case. Instead, you can insure any case that meets the minimum underwriting criteria provided by the insurer.
What firms are they suitable for?
Delegated Authority schemes are suitable for solicitors who specialise in specific areas of litigation and run volumes of cases. Often this is the only way certain case types can be insured.
Affordable Premiums
Premiums are more affordable for DA schemes because Solicitors are required to insure all cases from the outset. A lower premium is charged on every case to spread the risk. This fulfils the basic principle of insurance where “many premiums” pay for the “few claims”.
If solicitors only want to insure occasional cases that are high risk or haven’t settled then, Delegated Authority is not suitable. (see Rate Assessed ATE).
Aligning Interests
To safeguard insurers against solicitors “cherry picking” cases for insurance, an agreement between the insurer and solicitor is entered into. The agreement would require Solicitors to ascertain the merits of a case and also provide their services under a CFA or DBA – “no win no fee” agreement. This creates an alignment of interest between the parties and insurers take comfort from the fact that Solicitors won’t run cases unless they have a good chance of winning.
How are policies purchased?
Once a solicitor has been approved for a Delegated Authority scheme, all policies are administered using a online web portal.
Rate Assessed means that the premium rate is assessed and calculated on a case by case basis.
How is this done?
Each case or risk is presented to the Insurer separately which means a completed proposal and documentary evidence in support of the case must be submitted.
Are all cases insurable?
Sadly not. Amongst factors the insurer needs to consider before offering terms are; whether the case has sufficient prospects of success, the solvency of the opponent and whether the case meets the necessary economic hurdles.
Economic hurdles?
Since few premiums are now recoverable from an opponent, the premium must be paid by the insured. As a rule of thumb, “damages” need to be several times greater than the “insured costs” in order for a premium to be commercially viable.
Sounds expensive?
Yes. Rate Assessed ATE premiums are expensive but here’s why. Lets imagine we have 10 individual legal disputes and all have a 60% chance of winning. Now lets imagine the legal costs payable if each case loses are £100,000. Statistically, 4 cases (40%) out of the 10 cases will lose costing the insurer £400,000. This means that before overheads and profit, each case would attract a minimum premium of £40,000 just to break even.
Complicated?
The above example assumes that the premiums have all been paid on the losing cases but let’s suppose a client is impecunious and can’t afford to pay for the premium up front. In this case the client might require a “deferred” and “self insured” premium. An explanation for these is given in our FAQ section however this would increase premiums further.
For the above reasons, and in order to make the premiums affordable, the damages must be considerably greater than the insured legal costs.
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Let’s talk. We don’t need war an peace but we do need to know a little bit about you and your Litigation case types.
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Once we know what you need we can tailor a scheme to suit following which we will send you an agreement.
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The final stage is to give you online access to the policy types agreed. If you use a Proclaim Case Management System, we can integrate this to automate the process freeing up your fee earners time.
Our most popular product. ATE for Personal Injury claims.
With continually rising Court fees, Locus reports, and Expert Witness fees plus significant reductions in profit costs, its not surprising that Solicitors can no longer fund their clients cases without the certainty of ATE Insurance.
Solicitors and Litigants recognise that ATE Insurance is a better alternative than asking litigants to pay their disbursements up front.
With no opponents costs to pay, even when failing to beat a Part 36 offer and with the added benefit of a premium that is not paid until the case ends, and only if it wins, the advantages to the client are overwhelming.
Clinical or Medical Negligence is where substandard care has been provided by healthcare professionals that causes direct harm to a patient.
This can take place anywhere or at any time whilst receiving medical attention and can be a surgical error, misdiagnosis, or incorrect treatment that causes unnecessary loss or suffering.
We don’t just insure litigation
