Thank you for the invitation to give evidence to the Special Public Bill Committee on the Third Parties (Rights against Insurers) Bill.

  AIRMIC is a membership body that represents the insurance buyers employed by large organisations. It is estimated that the members of AIRMIC control about £5 billion of insurance premium spend with a further £2 billion premium paid to in-house or captive insurance companies and a further £2 billion paid in insurance claims that are paid directly by the member company. The latter £2 billion represents payments within deductibles (or excesses) and other retentions on insurance policies..

  AIRMIC members do not represent consumers and therefore AIRMIC has no opinion on the proposed reforms insofar as they benefit personal or consumer claimants. However, there are circumstances where an AIRMIC member organisation may have suffered a loss that is believed to be caused by the fault of a third party. In these circumstances it is possible that an AIRMIC member may discover that the third party they wish to claim against has become insolvent and been struck off the register of companies.

  In these circumstances the AIRMIC member organisation will benefit from the proposed amendments to the Third Parties (Rights Against Insurers) Bill. Accordingly, AIRMIC fully supports the proposed changes as they will simplify the procedures that need to be followed in these circumstances.

  Whilst AIRMIC would be happy to present oral evidence to the committee, I would suggest that the AIRMIC position is simple and straightforward. I do not have information about how often these circumstances have arisen or the sums that are likely to be involved.

Paul Hopkin

Technical Director

18 January 2010