Insurers this week hailed an end to their year-long battle with the legal profession over the level of success fees lawyers can charge in employers' liability disease claims.
The agreement will speed up the claims settlement process and potentially lead to a reduction in insurers' overall claims costs.
The deal, hammered out by the Civil Justice Council (CJC), sets the increased fees that claimant solicitors can charge for successful EL claims. This ranges from 27.5% of base costs for all asbestos-related claims to 100% of base costs for stress and repetitive strain injury claims.
Phil Bell, technical manager of liability at Royal & SunAlliance, said: "Of course we would like to have seen lower levels, but we broadly support the limits and are relieved to see an end to the arguing.
"This agreement will speed up the claims process and allow insurers to incorporate realistic figures into their pricing and reserving structures."
A spokesman at Zurich said: "These success fees should remove a further hurdle from the costs negotiation process and aid the handling and processing of claims."
The new limits will be implemented in October, subject to approval by the Civil Procedure Rule Committee.
Robert Musgrove, chief executive of the CJC, said: "This comes after a very difficult and intense period of negotiations. It is not possible to homogenise risk for diseases in the same way it is for motor accidents, for example, which explains why it has been received by insurers with such relief."
The CJC will now begin the complex mediation process for public liability success fees.
