Asbestos Victims Demand Payout From Insurance Industry

Insurance fat cats were yesterday urged to donate a “£14 million windfall” from asbestos compensation payouts on badly-needed research into asbestos-related diseases.
For the past decade, insurers have saved vast sums on payouts where asbestos victims had already got compensation from the Government.
Last October, the Government changed the rules and began reclaiming these lump-sum payouts back from insurers when victims go on to make successful claims.
But the insurance industry was allowed to keep the money it had already saved - estimated by legal experts to be around £14 million over ten years.

Protestors outside the Association of British Insurers yesterday called on the insurance industry to use some of that money to try to find a cure for - or at least alleviate the suffering of - future victims of the asbestos timebomb.
Tony Whitston, of the Asbestos Victims Support Group Forum, said: “It’s like the MPs and their expenses.”It was within the rules but it was wrong. The insurance industry saved millions of pounds in compensation that was instead paid by taxpayers.”They should do the decent thing and donate this money to researching ways to help future victims of the asbestos timebomb.”

Deaths caused by asbestos are still increasing, are set to hit 6,000 a year and are not expected to decline until 2030.A new National Centre for Asbestos-Related Disease is one of the five demands of the Daily Mirror’s Asbestos Timebomb campaign.
Insurers have not responded to our call for them to help pay for the £10 million centre.But a spokesman for the Association of British Insurers said that the industry didn’t make a windfall as it took into account Government payouts “when setting its premiums”.

That seems unlikely, given that the Government compensation scheme began in 1979, after most of today’s asbestos victims were already exposed, and not long before the most dangerous types of asbestos were banned in 1985.
Most of the asbestos liability insurance claims are on policies dating back to the 1960s and 1970s, when the deadly material was widely used.Despite the credit crunch, the insurance industry is in good health.

Four insurance giants recently announced a court fight to overturn the Scottish Parliament’s decision to re-instate compensation for sufferers of asbestos-linked pleural plaques.
These four firms - which together make up more than half the employee liability insurance market - have reported strong accounts over the last 12 months:
* Aviva - formerly known as Norwich Union - recently announced operating profits of £2.3 billion, up 4% last year, and will this year give £875 million in dividends to shareholders.
* AXA made £1.2 billion profits last year and gave £835 million in dividends to shareholders.
* Royal Sun Alliance made pre-tax profits of £759 million last year and handed shareholders £250 million in dividends.
* Zurich made £3.5 billion profits in 2008, earning £913 million to shareholders.

Nick Sommerlad

http://blogs.mirror.co