NFB represents employers on board of ELTO (Insurance tracing office)
The National Federation of Builders (NFB) is pleased to announce that its member Richard Jeffs (Finance Director at Pearce Construction (Barnstaple) Ltd) has been accepted on to the board of the Employers’ Liability Tracing Office, alongside a place for the NFB’s policy manager Paul Bogle on ELTO’s advisory board. Both places will ensure that employers have a voice at the table when decisions are being made about untraced insurance policies for occupational health-related compensation claims. The NFB is the only industry body to be representing employers following two years of active dialogue with the Association of British Insurers and the Department for Work and Pensions.
The ELTO Board will oversee the work of the technical committee, formed as a result of the Mesothelioma Bill, and will scrutinise the decisions of the committee around disputes between employers, insurers and claimants on the validity or clarity of coverage at the time of exposure. The committee also assesses and agrees standards of evidence for insurance cover.
The tracing office’s 2013 work programme is designed to support the delivery of ELTO’s over-arching strategic aim - to make a positive difference for claimants by providing an excellent service that enables them to identify the correct insurer of their employer.
Chair of ELTO Adrian Brown said: “ELTO is delighted to welcome the NFB’s Richard Jeffs to its board, and other NFB staff to our advisory board. They are an important addition as the voice of the employers and we look forward to their industry insights as they contribute to the work of the Board in ensuring ever improving tracing processes.”
The establishment of ELTO in April 2011 was the insurance industry’s pro-active response to improve claimant access to employers’ liability (EL) policy data. The evidence suggests ELTO is making real progress as in 2013, 84.3% of unique potential claimants using the tracing office successfully identified an EL insurer compared to 81.5% in 2012. This increase is a sign of the membership’s commitment to continue to invest in and further improve their tracing activities and the volume of enquiries grows.
New ELTO Board member Richard Jeffs said: “I am delighted to be representing the NFB, and employers at large, on the ELTO Board. It should reassure industry that ELTO has taken this step as a positive measure to ensure balance and fairness in its work. Claimants have a horrendous time dealing with occupation-related illnesses and anything to smooth the process of compensation should be an imperative. By the same token, if tracing processes can be speeded up and improved even further this will undoubtedly be of benefit to all concerned. This includes the small business which risks closure in the face of a claim for which it cannot produce a record of insurance cover even when there was cover, simply because the claim relates to historical evidence which may have been destroyed over the years. My purpose is to be a bridge between employers and insurers to ensure greater understanding of the issues and the solutions.”
Richard Beresford, chief executive of the NFB said: “The addition of two NFB representatives to the ELTO boards is the culmination of two years of dialogue and engagement with the ABI and the DWP. It is a great example of industries working together with government to ensure the inclusion of all sides in what can be a fraught arena.
“We are confident that the employer’s voice can contribute constructively to this work and look forward to a collaboration which should make a difference to outcomes for claimants and companies alike.”
Many of the tracing enquiries ELTO receives are related to the construction industry, and can involve the onset of asbestos-related diseases such as mesothelioma, which kills on average over 2,000 people each year*. Because of its long latency of over 30 years, claims arise well after the companies involved have either closed down, merged or reformed, and very often in these cases there is an issue with tracing decades-old policies.
Mesothelioma, a form of asbestos-related cancer, is the source of a relatively high number of large compensation claims by employees against former employers under whose employment they may have been exposed. Those most at risk are men who worked in the building industry before 1999 when asbestos was used extensively. Cases are set to rise to around 2,500 deaths each year by 2016 and to reach a peak between 2016 and 2020*.
