Furley Page Blog

Hypocrisy of Insurance Companies

By Neille Ryan - 30/09/2009 09:33 AM
Categories: Personal Injury Claims

I blogged recently about my concerns that the purely financial interests of the insurance industry are given far too much weight by their friends in Government.

Here is a classic example of insurer’s hypocrisy. On the one hand they say (they would wouldn’t they) that legal costs are too high. On the other hand many of those same insurers, through their legal expenses insurance arms, sell claims to solicitors, charging quite incredible fees for the referral. I have heard stories of one very well known Legal Expenses Insurer charging around £800 for each referral. It is beyond me how any solicitor could afford to pay such a sum but there always seems to be someone who will. The problem, of course, is that the huge referral fee eats so much into the solicitor’s costs that there is little left to run the case, so the solicitor may have to cut corners and both the quality of the representation and the outcome for the Claimant suffer. Is it any coincidence that compensation claims against negligent solicitors are increasing? I think not.

Can divorce be stopped?

By Anne Blenkinsop - 23/09/2009 02:12 PM
Categories: Family Law

Can a divorce be stopped, once the procedure has started?

One of the questions that we are sometimes asked is whether a divorce can be stopped or 'cancelled' prior to the decree being made absolute.

The answer to this question is an unconditional YES; divorce can be stopped provided that both parties agree.

If you reconcile at any stage, even after the pronouncement of the decree nisi, you can ask the Court to rescind the decree and dismiss the petition. The effect of this, from a legal point of view, is as if the petition had never been issued.

Reforming System of Compensation

By Neille Ryan - 14/09/2009 06:41 PM
Categories: Personal Injury Claims

If you were going to reform our system of compensation, where would you start? The Civil Justice Council [CJC] have, in their wisdom, decided to start at the end of the process, namely with costs. Rather than costs being determined by the amount of work the Claimant has to do to win their case, the CJC want to impose fixed costs on the vast majority of claims. Needless to say those fixed costs will be far far lower than the present levels, which are themselves hardly generous, yet with no reduction in the work the Claimant is required to do.

Agonising Decisions

By Anne Blenkinsop - 10/09/2009 02:43 PM
Categories: Family Law

As family lawyers people come to us at an intensely traumatic time in their lives and reveal to us their most fundamental concerns about their relationship, their children's futures and their financial worries. I hope that, as well as highlighting developments in the law on this Blog, by discussing, in very general terms, some of the concerns that we are asked about from time to time, it will be reassuring to anyone reading to realise that many of their concerns are shared by others in the same situation.

Treating Customers Fairly

By Simon Ludden - 08/09/2009 10:24 AM
Categories: Independent Financial Advice

Life is never boring in the financial world, although most of the excitement has been of the negative variety recently. Therefore after a difficult year, it was great to get some good news for a change in June.

Firstly, as referred to elsewhere on this site, we did extremely well in a “mystery shopper” exercise. My colleague Ruth showing the importance that we place on client care. However it was even more important that we survived the scrutiny of our regulator, the Financial Services Authority (FSA). All smaller advisory firms in the country will, at some point, have to meet up with the FSA to discuss with them, whether they are “treating customers fairly” (TCF). This was a major initiative that was rolled out by the FSA some 2 years ago. All firms were to have implemented certain procedures by now. Our appointment was two days after I returned from holiday, on 16 June.

Simon's Market View

By Simon Ludden - 07/09/2009 05:02 PM
Categories: Independent Financial Advice

I think you would have needed to live life as a hermit not to have realised that the past year has been an incredibly difficult one for the economy and investments generally.

This time last year, we knew that the banks had problems, but no-one really believed that any of the significant institutions would be allowed to fail. Therefore many believed that the stock market valuation of various financial institutions had fallen as far as it was likely to.

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