Market report: insurance
The personal injury market has been immeasurably altered by Covid-19 and the new normal of flexible working. <em>IHL</em> reports on the issues faced by general counsel over employers’ liability and those acting for major insurers.
For personal injury (PI) practitioners, dynamism is one of the features which makes this such a fulfilling field to work in. The work follows a constant ebb and flow of patterns and trends – from the boom and wane of asbestos-related cases, to the rapid spike in noise-induced hearing loss claims, to the recent resurgence of interest in vicarious liability. The world of PI often acts as a microcosm of broader market and societal changes, mapping developments and drawing out issues. It’s no surprise, then, that the pervasive and rapid changes inflicted on our daily lives over the last few years have been mirrored, magnified and mulled over in the personal injury arena, and the fallout is of primary concern to in-house legal teams, particularly in the insurance sector.
For two years, the effects of the Covid-19 crisis on the structure of our professional and personal lives were stark; as travel decreased to an unprecedented minimum, the age of working from home (WFH) – or bearing the responsibilities of being labelled a ‘key worker’ – dawned. Even now, when the peak of the pandemic appears to be retreating into the past, the workplace remains radically altered. With such dramatic developments afoot, in Spring 2020 the PI market braced itself for significant ramifications. Subsequent years, however, were perhaps initially more notable for the repercussions that were not seen than for those which were. For Howard Watson, partner at Herbert Smith Freehills, the sense of expectation followed by a lack of immediate fallout that characterised much of the PI market throughout 2020 and 2021 was reminiscent of the unfulfilled dire predictions that abounded at the turn of the millennium.
