Personal Injury cover

[MatthewR]

One for @Cookson I think?

I'm currently renewing my insurance, the providers are offering PI cover as standard on the comprehensive cover up to £5K in legal fees / injury cover. Alternatively for £50 (less some change) they will provide PI Plus cover which covers up to £100K legal fees / injury cover.

Is it worth the additional premium? I seem to recall you mentioning that the legal fees are fixed price, I also have Legal cover through our home insurance, and I guess as a worst case scenario we could do to no win no fee if the worst happened?

Im potentially being tight for the sake of £50 but I do not wish to pay more for insurance than I absolutely have to

 

[brisa4984]

From my understanding Personal injury is an insurance product which gives fixed costs for certian types of injury. Where as additional legal protection covers higher legal fees when you go after the third party.

For example. When i had whiplash in my lower back i got 3k from insurance and 3k from personal injury cover.

Odd that you have a product which covers both together and increasing your premium increases the cover for both. If you have to go for your insurer the increase in premium to cover higher legal fees is worth it although in my view thats quite an increase.

 

[MatthewR]

Sorry I might not have explained it correctly, the PI cover was described as 'up to £5k on the legal fees or pay out for injury such as loss of limb, sight etc'

We do have extended legal cover as a separate part of the policy which would cover legal fees to go after a third party if necessary as opposed to having a fixed sum which only covers certain injuries?

I'm sure cookson mentioned something about PI insurance and not to bother but I can't find it now

 

[MatthewR]

Found the post now, sounds like it's not worth paying the additional and to go through legal cover instead of PI.

 

[Cookson]

OK... So, when you're injured you can use any solicitor to claim for injury. Some unions/insurers etc offer their services as above, Legal Expenses Insurance etc. They will then have a few law firms on their panel which they farm the work out to.

If you use a No Win, No fee service, you will generally give up a percentage of your damages to them as their success fee. For instance, we charge "up to" 25% of past losses. But, as I've been doing this over 20 years, I am more likely to get a client a better settlement than some 2 bit firm who have to beg insurers for work. So whilst you may save on deductions by using LEI firms, you are less likely to get a decent settlement, especially on multi-track cases woth over £25,000.

You can also take out After the Event insurance policies, which cover fees and disbursements should you run a case all the way to a trial and lose.