The Employers' Liability Code of Practice (ELCOP) has been operative since 1999 and supporting Protocol for Recording EL Policies was signed up to by the ABI, LMA, International Underwriting Association (IUA), British Insurance Brokers Association (BIBA), Institute of Insurance Brokers (IIB) and London Market Insurance Brokers' Committee (LMBC) in October 2008. ELCOP requires insurers to record details of the employers they insure from their EL policy records, and to keep them in an accessible manner for 60 years.  However, it is a voluntary Code and while it has helped with the problem of people trying to trace their employer's insurer there are still many individuals, particularly those with asbestos related conditions, who are left without help.

It was announced by Jack Straw, the then Justice Secretary, in February 2010, that one proposal to improve the situation would be to create a UK-wide Employers' Liability Tracing Office (ELTO) to manage an electronic database of EL policies and to operate the tracing service. ELTO will ensure all the necessary details about the insurer and the insured employer for all new EL policies are recorded in an accessible format going forward, so that future claimants will more easily be able to trace an insurer.

It is envisaged that from 1^st April 2011:

1. All general insurers will be required to notify the FSA whether they write U.K. Employers’ Liability Insurance contracts.
2. Such insurers will be required to make certain policy information available for tracing purposes in a specified and readily accessible form

This requirement will be satisfied by publishing the information publicly, for instance on the insurers website, or by becoming a member of ELTO and submitting the requisite information to the ELTO database.  This will include the insured’s details, subsidiary details, policy details and ultimately a unique reference number currently understood to be the PAYE code for the employers. 

Insurers like RSA will not be able to meet this obligation without your assistance.  They want to take the opportunity to raise awareness of this forthcoming change and advise that details will follow in due course once the industry standard has been established.

Article courtesy of RSA Published 15-07-10