Brian Hey prize winner 2022: Sessional meeting presented by the IFoA UK Asbestos Working Party
Andy Whiting will present on the latest Brian Hey prize-winning paper produced by the UK Asbestos Working Party. This paper sets out the Working Party’s findings, a discussion of the updated model used by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), and a re-estimation of the potential cost of asbestos-related claims to the UK EL Insurance Market. The ubiquity of asbestos and the danger it poses to human health has, and will continue to have, profound consequences. In the UK alone it is estimated around 50,000 people have died of mesothelioma and thousands more are likely to die in the future. This paper has been produced to cover one aspect: the financial impact on the UK insurance market of UK asbestos-related claims. While this paper focuses on the financial cost of claims it is by no means intended to treat the real human issues lightly. The wider social and human aspects are rightly examined elsewhere. In addition, this paper presents the results of a survey of aggregated asbestos-related claims numbers and costs for a large proportion (estimated to be around 80%) of the UK EL insurance market. As well as giving an insight into trends in claim development, this survey has facilitated the estimation of future costs for asbestos-related claims.