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Accident compensation and the myth of the "compensation culture"
The actuarial profession in the UK has adopted a policy (as stated on its website here) of campaigning against what it calls the "compensation culture." This involves the profession in making various insinuations against accident victims - for example, that it is in some way blameworthy if accident victims receive compensation for negligence; or that the costs of such compensation are excessive, or rapidly increasing, or otherwise unjustifiable.
I believe that this campaign is inconsistent with the data on accident compensation in the UK, which show the costs of accident compensation to be lower than in almost all other industrialised countries. It appears to me that the actuaries' campaign is motivated by commercial interests which the Faculty and Institute of Actuaries wishes to advance, to the detriment of accident victims.
Some articles and letters on this topic:
- Compensation culture allegations about accident compensation made by the Actuarial Profession (December 2002)
- Justice culture an article by another actuary, Tony Silverman, refuting the allegations (September 2003)
- Letter to The Actuary my comment in support of the above article (October 2003)
- Better routes to redress Further article by me (July 2004) which The Actuary refused to publish
- Better routes to redress (pdf, 1p, 54kB) Edited version of my article as published by The Actuary under new editorship(October 2005)
- Letter to The Actuary from Julian Lowe (pdf, 3pp, 73kB) Ad hominem response (November 2005) - longer than the space allowed for my article!
- Letter to The Actuary Succinct reply from me (December 2005) which The Actuary refused to publish