Bumps, Bruises & Backlogs: Injury Claims in 2025.

The UK’s personal injury claims landscape has undergone seismic shifts over the past few years, led by major regulatory reforms, digitisation of processes, and a clear effort to cut costs in the motor insurance sector. As we roll through 2025, the focus is less on revolution and more on refinement.

This year marks a crucial point of reflection. Are the reforms working? Are injured people still accessing justice? And has the industry truly passed on the promised savings?

Let’s dig into what’s ahead for road traffic collision (RTC) injury claims in 2025—and what it means for insurers, claimants, and the wider industry.

Whiplash: Tariffs Rise, But Tensions Remain.

The most headline grabbing change this year is the uplift to the whiplash injury tariff, effective for accidents on or after 31 May 2025. For the first time since the Civil Liability Act came into force in 2021, compensation for minor neck and back injuries will increase by around 15%, to account for inflation.

While insurers will need to adjust their systems accordingly, claimant groups are still pushing the message that the tariffs remain too low to fairly reflect pain, suffering and recovery. Nonetheless, the increase acknowledges that four years of flat payouts couldn’t last forever.

But the tariff isn’t the only point of interest, it’s the mixed injury claims where things get more nuanced. Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Rabot v Hassam, it’s now clear that when a claimant suffers both a tariff injury (like whiplash) and a non-tariff injury (like shoulder sprain), both injuries must be compensated subject to a deduction for any overlap in suffering. It brings a degree of clarity that both claimant and defendant sides had been craving.

OIC Portal: Progress, But Still Patchy.

The Official Injury Claim portal (OIC) was launched in 2021 to simplify the process for making minor injury claims under £5,000. Its original goal? Empower injured motorists to claim without needing a solicitor.

Fast forward to 2025, and the reality looks rather different.

Around 90% of claims submitted via OIC are still made with legal representation, while just 10% are from unrepresented claimants. That’s a worrying stat for a system built on self-service.

While the portal has matured adding clearer guidance, archiving old claims, and improving technical integrations it remains overly complex for many people. The Ministry of Justice and the Motor Insurers’ Bureau have made incremental fixes, but the access to justice gap remains a real concern.

At the same time, delays are growing. Settlements now take an average of 8–9 months, and the portal holds hundreds of thousands of pending claims. Inactive or dormant claims are being archived to reduce visible backlogs, but the volume of unresolved cases suggests a process that still needs fine-tuning.

Fraud: Smarter, Subtler—and Still Rising

Fraud hasn’t gone away. It’s just evolved.

With whiplash payouts capped, opportunistic claimants have pivoted to injuries like tinnitus, travel anxiety, and soft-tissue trauma in other parts of the body. These injuries fall outside the tariff and are harder to disprove, making them ripe for exploitation.

We’ve also seen a sharp rise in “crash-for-cash” involving scooters and motorcycles, particularly in London, where some boroughs have seen a 6,000% spike in claims tied to low-speed collisions involving riders allegedly targeting unsuspecting motorists.

Insurers are deploying better fraud analytics, but there are still gaps in the OIC portal’s defences, including a lack of identity verification, IP tracking, or device fingerprinting. Critics have described the portal as a fraudsters playground for this reason.

2025 could be the year where the OIC’s back end is finally hardened something both insurers and claimant representatives agree is sorely needed.

Medical Reports: Delays In, Fee Increases Coming.

Another quiet but significant shift in 2025 involves the timing of medical reports.

From this year, all parties including claimant representatives must wait for the defendant’s liability response before instructing a MedCo medical expert. It’s designed to reduce waste and ensure reports are only commissioned when needed.

At the same time, the government is reviewing MedCo fees, which haven’t been updated since 2014. A GP report, for example, is expected to rise from £180 to around £210 + VAT. The increase could make report writing more commercially viable for medical experts and help keep the system moving.

The Claims Market: Fewer Claims, Fewer Solicitors.

Since the reforms were introduced, claim volumes have halved, and many smaller personal injury firms have exited the RTA space. Claimant-side innovation is now coming from low-cost, tech-enabled firms and legal CMCs stepping into the void.

There’s also been a notable shift in injury types being claimed. While pure whiplash cases are falling, mixed injuries are increasing, and tinnitus claims once rare have doubled. This behaviour is driving further insurer concern that the reforms are being undermined by clever workarounds.

From a claimant perspective, the outlook is mixed. While some are managing to get fair outcomes through the OIC or new-style legal providers, many others are being left behind unaware of their rights, or put off by low compensation offers and complex systems.

Insurer Perspective: Tariff Relief, But Premiums Still High.

Insurers have largely welcomed the reforms, pointing to reduced claims frequency, more predictable costs, and better tools for fraud detection.

But they’re under increasing pressure to explain why premiums are still rising up by as much as 70% since 2021 according to APIL, despite injury claims costs falling.

All eyes are now on HM Treasury, which must report to Parliament this year on whether insurers have passed on the savings promised under the 2018 Civil Liability Act. The findings could influence future reform appetite and public trust in the system.

Meanwhile, the ABI continues to lobby for:

• Expanding the tariff system to other minor injuries.
• Increasing the small claims limit in line with inflation.
• Cracking down on “tactical” injury claims used to inflate payouts.
• Reforming other cost drivers like credit hire and repair charges.

It’s clear insurers aren’t done with reform they see more headroom for cost-cutting in the system.

What’s Next?

The injury claims space in 2025 is characterised by:

• Incremental improvement rather than wholesale change.
• Legal clarity post-Rabot on mixed injuries.
• Growing delays and process complexity for both sides.
• Fraud evolving faster than tech can catch up.
• And a continuing tug-of-war between fair compensation and controlling costs.

Further down the line, we may see:

• A formal ADR process within the OIC portal.
• Automation of settlement offers for simple claims.
• Enhanced fraud detection through IP tracking and digital ID.
• And possibly a new round of reform, depending on political appetite post-election.

Final Words

For now, 2025 is a year of settling the dust. The rules have changed. The portals are (mostly) built. And the industry is learning to navigate a new landscape that’s still far from perfect, but perhaps more stable than it was a few years ago.

The key challenge remains this: How do we strike the right balance between cost efficiency, fraud prevention, and access to justice for genuine claimants?

That’s the question everyone in the industry insurers, lawyers, policymakers, and consumers will be watching closely this year.

Written by Luke.🖖
The Pulse of UK Insurance