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6 steps to choosing Employers' Liability limits

How do you choose Employers' Liability limits of indemnity that meet your needs? Check out our six steps.

Employers' Liability (EL) insurance is compulsory for any business that employs staff (both temporary and permanent), subject to certain exemptions.

While the statutory minimum is £5m, and today's policies tend to start at £10m, many customers will need a higher limit to adequately meet their needs.

Rate change highlights need for review

Work-related injuries regularly involve issues of long-term care and loss of earnings. In such circumstances, lump sum settlements can be awarded, intended to compensate claimants over a long period of time. As these sums can be invested, a 'discount rate' is applied to offset prospective investment returns and ensure claimants are not under- or over-compensated.

Since 2001, this rate has been set at +2.5%, meaning settlements were reduced in expectation of positive investment returns being made. However, on 27 February 2017, the Lord Chancellor dramatically reduced the rate to -0.75%, meaning settlements will now be increased to reflect expected negative returns.

£10m on single claims now plausible

The reduction in the discount rate has immediate implications for the potential size of future personal injury settlements (see case study example in right hand column).

"Historically, it was extremely unlikely that a single claim could exceed £10m," explains Steven Taylorson, Head of Employers Liability at Zurich.

"However, following the change in discount rate, this is now a very real possibility."

Customers should consider the following six points when determining a suitable level of cover:

1. Multiple Claimants

The EL indemnity limit applies to each claim individually. However, work related injury claims can often involve multiple employees. A claim, or series of claims arising out of a single cause, are considered to be one loss. Therefore, thinking should always be framed in terms of whether a limit is sufficient to sustain multiple claimants arising from the same incident.

2. Concentration of staff

Employees are often concentrated in one area, for example in an office or on a building site. In these circumstances, one incident has the potential to harm multiple people. The more staff concentrated in one place, the higher the limits of indemnity customers should be considering.

"When individual claims are now reaching £10m, if multiple staff are potentially at risk, you need to be seriously questioning whether those lower limits are sufficient," says Steven.

3. Nature of activities

The largest EL claims tend to involve injury as opposed to death, with claimants suffering long-term loss of earnings and the need for continuous care. Customers should therefore consider whether they are engaged in any activities with a higher risk of injury, such as working at height.

4. Hazardous locations

Certain locations are more susceptible to incidents and more likely to involve multiple people. Common examples include: offshore locations, railways and airports.

5. Inner limits

Most EL policies include some common limitations. For example, incidents arising from terrorism or offshore will typically be limited to the statutory minimum of £5m.

6. Future circumstances

EL claims can arise years after the alleged incident - in the case of work-related diseases, this can even be decades later. Between buying a policy and a claim being settled, a lot can change to affect final settlement values.

The recent change in the personal injury discount rate is a perfect example of this.

"You are buying a policy today for claims that will be settled under tomorrow's legal landscape," explains Steven.

"We don't know what the future will bring, so you'll want to factor-in some contingency for prospective claims inflation."

How we can help

Zurich is the market leader in Employers' Liability insurance in the UK, bringing unrivalled experience and knowledge to share with our customers. In addition to insurance, our expert Risk Engineering team can help customers prevent incidents occurring, while our innovative Rehabilitation Service can help to significantly reduce the size of claims that do occur.

For more information on anything discussed in the article, or to discuss options for increasing limits of indemnity, please speak with your local Zurich contact.

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