Insurers paid $1.73 billion in professional indemnity (PI) and public and product liability (PL) claims last year, down 15.7% from 2014, according to the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority’s (APRA) National Claims and Policies Database.

Non-facility PI claims declined 17.5% to $843 million and non-facility PL claims were down 14.2% to $854 million.

Facility business had claims payments of $35 million, down 11.3%.

At December 31 insurers reported almost $3.21 billion in case estimates for non-facility business, for further payments to be made on open claims, down 5.6% from the previous year.

The sector wrote $3.09 billion of gross premium for PI and PL classes of non-facility business last year, down 4.3%.

Gross written premium (GWP) for non-facility PI relating to about 637,000 risks fell 3.8% to $1.34 billion, while the amount for non-facility PL relating to about 2.63 million risks declined 4.6% to $1.75 billion.

The national average GWP for PI risk fell 9.5% to $2102 last year, while for PL risks the figure dropped 6.1% to $665.

The database is a comprehensive collection of policy and claims information on PI and PL insurance. It includes information on every open, reopened or finalised claim and policy underwritten since 2003 by APRA-regulated general insurers.