Employers Liability Tracing Office - What is it?

Employers’ Liability Tracing Office (ELTO) has been set up by the insurance industry as a separate body to help claimants who have suffered an injury or a disease, caused by the workplace to find the insurer of their former employers quickly and efficiently.

ELTO will build and maintain an Employers Liability Database (ELD) which will consist of all new and renewed Employers Liability Insurance policies, old Employers’ Liability policies that have new claims made against them and all successful traces from the current Tracing Service.

The existing Employers Liability Tracing Service is supported by a voluntary code of practice and relies solely on insurers checking against their own policy records. This new development will ensure simple, straightforward and corrected practices.

What is it?

All bodies that own Employers Liability Insurance for UK employers, including active and run-off insurers, will be invited to join the ELTO as members, on a voluntary basis.

Bodies will be required to submit specific data to ELTO in a specific format within a specific timescale. They must also continue to trace their own historic policies in accordance with ELTO membership rules.

ELTO will be owned by its members. However, the Association of British Insurers (ABI) will manage the governance structure, alongside the Government.

What are the timescales?

The ELTO programme has been in progress since April of this year. The whole process will consist of three stages before it is complete, which is expected to be in December 2012. The stages are as follows:

Stage 1

ELTO was established in April 2010, on a provisional basis, as an independent body with a provisional Board of Directors. In April this year, the existing tracing service began transferring from ABI to ELTO. The ELD has started being designed and the data that is to be captured and uploaded is already being defined. EL insurers have also been able to become ELTO members on a voluntary basis.

Stage 2

In January 2011, the FSA will introduce regulations for all bodies that own EL liabilities in the UK, including active and run-off companies to publish EL policy data. ELTO members will be required to upload new policies, renewed policies and old policies with new claims made against them to the database.

The ELD will go live in April 2011, where claimants will be able to access the ELD via the ELTO website.

Stage 3

This will involve capturing and recording additional policy information, which will be used to help improve future searches. This will commence from April 2011, where information including an employer’s reference number (ERN) will be compulsory. This additional data will need to be uploaded to the ELD from April 2012.

From October 2012, ELTO will roll out a sanction regime, and the full programme will be complete

Is there a specific format to use when supplying the data to the ELD?

In order to ensure that all data suppliers are able to capture and upload the relevant information efficiently and effectively, ELTO is developing a template for all to utilise.

This enables ELTO to provide thorough support to data suppliers throughout the somewhat complicated process. The template will be available to data suppliers sometime before April 2012, but the date is yet to be confirmed.

ELTO will provide full support

ELTO will give insurers and relevant trade bodies, such as the British Insurers’ Broker Association (BIBA) the information and any supporting documents to fully assist claimants who have suffered an injury or a disease at work in finding their employers insurer.

Each insurer will have a dedicated ELTO account manager to provide information and support where required. This will ensure that the whole process is as effective as possible.

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