Five Years On: Reflections on the OIC Portal and What Comes Next
As the Official Injury Claim Portal passes its fifth anniversary, Donna Scully, Owner/Director of Carpenters Group, says it offers a timely moment for reflection.
The reforms were introduced with clear and, in many ways, commendable objectives: to simplify the process for low-value road traffic accident claims, reduce costs, and ultimately deliver savings for consumers.
Five years on, it is clear that while some of these ambitions have been realised, the overall benefits are less clear, particularly when viewed through the lens of the injured individuals the system is designed to help. At the same time, we have seen claimant law firms exiting the market.
At the same time, we have seen claimant law firms exiting the market. The near-complete withdrawal of Claims Management Companies has been a notable and welcome shift.
In our view, this has contributed meaningfully to a reduction in unmeritorious claims. Likewise, the prohibition on settlement without medical evidence, something Carpenters has long supported, has helped to discourage exaggerated or opportunistic behaviours.
However, these successes must be balanced against the operational realities of delivering the system in practice. For both claimant representatives and insurers, the OIC Portal has brought considerable complexity.
Significant investment has been required across the market, from new system builds and integrations to ongoing maintenance, training, and the challenges of operating across dual portals.
At Carpenters Group, we have invested well into seven figures to fully integrate with the portal, supported by a highly skilled dedicated in-house IT and business systems function. Many firms have simply been unable to sustain that level of investment and have exited this area of work as a result.
The technical evolution of the system has also been more demanding than anticipated. The A2A interface alone has required 35 releases to date, a requirement for change that vastly exceeds anything seen under the Claims Portal.
While the MIB confirmed industry-wide costs of £47m in early 2025, greater transparency around ongoing investment and future cost requirements would be welcomed.
More fundamentally, some of the most pressing challenges arise once claims leave the portal.
Claim lifecycles have extended significantly, and only just over half of submitted claims have settled, and crucially, there remain no meaningful consequences for delay or unreasonable conduct within the system.
Where disputes do arise, the process can become fragmented and inefficient. The requirement to address liability and quantum separately - a distinctive feature of the reforms - can lead to hearings being spread over extended periods. This not only increases costs for all parties, including the Court Service, but also prolongs the experience for injured claimants seeking resolution.
The feedback following OIC hearings is that they are more complex and take longer than their Claims Portal equivalents. Extending the Digital Claims Portal to encompass cases exiting the OIC process would be a practical step towards streamlining what is still a paper-based and disjointed journey.
There are also important questions to consider around accessibility. The portal was designed, in part, to empower litigants in person. Yet while headline figures suggest around 11% of users fall into this category, wider data indicates that true self-representation is likely much lower and closer to 5%-6%.
The fact that 87% of calls to the OIC Support Centre in 2025 came from litigants in person tells its own story: even in a ‘self-service’ environment, the system can be difficult to navigate without support.
There is also a question-mark around governance of the new Portal. It is not clear why the governance structure though appropriate for Claims Portal, is deemed to be not required for the OIC.
None of this is to say the reforms have failed. Rather, they highlight that delivery in practice has not always aligned with the original intention - particularly when it comes to user experience.
Encouragingly, there is a clear appetite across the market to address these challenges collaboratively. Carpenters is now part of a cross-industry initiative to achieve these objectives.
In Autumn 2025, Carpenters Group brought together senior leaders from across the insurance and legal sectors for an OIC roundtable. The discussion reflected a strong consensus around several constructive, practical improvements: the establishment of a formal OIC Portal Board, the introduction of a behaviour and standards committee, greater transparency and access to data, improved compensator identification, and stronger integration between the OIC and Claims Portal environments.
These are not proposals to revisit or undermine the principles of the reforms. Instead, they are designed to strengthen governance, improve efficiency, and enhance confidence for all users of the system.
As Government continues to consider the post-implementation landscape, the opportunity now lies in refinement rather than reinvention.
By focusing on how the system operates day-to-day and reducing complexity, improving accountability and, crucially, keeping the needs of injured people front and centre, we can build a model that is not only cost-effective, but also fair, accessible and sustainable for the long term.
That should ultimately be the true measure of success.
Credit: Insurance Post
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