ELTO urges insurers to become members

The Employers’ Liability Tracing Office (ELTO) has welcomed new FSA regulations requiring insurers to publish data on employers' liability policies and new claims made against EL policies.

The regulations follow the FSA consultation which closed last September.

Under the previous voluntary code of practice, insurers were given details by the claimant or representative and were asked to search their records to the best of their ability; but this did not provide an immediate result.

Adrian Brown, provisional chair of the the Employers’ Liability Tracing Office (ELTO) and UK chief executive of RSA, said: “The new regulations by the FSA should have no significant impact on the rules governing the existing members of ELTO. I would urge those companies that have yet to sign up voluntarily as ELTO members to do so today, now that it is mandatory to publish this information.

“The new employers’ liability database should be of real benefit to claimants and representatives acting on their behalf. Searches of policies loaded onto the central database should take a matter of minutes and this will increase the speed with which a claimant representative can progress with a making a claim.

“In time, the ELD will become a comprehensive record of EL Policies for the insurance industry.”

Nick Starling, director general insurance and health at the ABI said: “Insurers are determined to do all they can to ensure that people with a work-related injury or disease are able to trace their employer or its insurer to claim against. This is why the industry is committed to developing ELTO into a comprehensive service to help claimants.

“The FSA’s regulations will improve the current situation for both lawyers and claimants as all insurers will be now be required to publish their data making any search much more thorough. We welcome this move to help speed up the process for claimants and lawyers to identify the holder of their EL policy."

The development of ELTO – an organisation which has been created to manage a database of EL policy data – will make it easier for claimants and their representatives to trace the insurance company that holds the EL policy when making a claim.

The new Employers’ Liability Database (ELD) will be a centrally-held record of new and renewed policies, recorded in the same format and maintained by ELTO.

The following policies will be initially loaded on to the database:

  • New and renewed policies from April 2011
  • Old policies that have a claim made against them
  • Policies previously identified through the tracing service

The regulations compelling insurers to publish their EL policies comes in to effect from April 2011 and the requirement to collect additional data such as subsidiary company information and Employer Reference Numbers will begin in April 2012.

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