Employers’ liability

ELTO (Employers’ Liability Tracing Office)

Category: Employers' liability · Reviewed by the Apex broking team · Last reviewed 2026-08-22 · ~5 min read

In short: ELTO is the Employers’ Liability Tracing Office, an industry body that operates a central, publicly searchable database of UK employers’ liability policies. Its purpose is to let someone who has developed a work-related disease or injury — often decades after the exposure — identify which insurer covered their former employer, even where the employer itself no longer exists. It exists because FCA rules in ICOBS 8.4 require insurers writing UK commercial EL business to maintain a searchable employers’ liability register and to make it available to claimants, either through their own website or through a qualifying tracing office.

Category: Employers' liability
Also known as: Employers’ Liability Tracing Office, EL tracing office, EL database, ELD
Related concepts: employers’ liability insurance, Employers’ Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969, Fairchild causation

What ELTO is

ELTO is a not-for-profit company set up by the UK insurance market to run a single searchable record of employers’ liability (EL) insurance policies. Insurers and Lloyd’s managing agents that write UK commercial EL business supply policy data to it; the resulting database can be searched free of charge through ELTO’s website by anyone with a potential claim, by their representatives, and by other insurers and intermediaries.

The search is built around the employer, not the individual. You search by employer name, address and the relevant period of employment, and the database returns the insurer, the policy number and the period of cover where a match is found. Newer records are also matched using the employer reference number — the HMRC PAYE reference for the business — which insurers collect at inception and renewal precisely because it is a far more reliable key than a trading name that may have changed several times.

Why a tracing office was needed

Employers’ liability is the classic long-tail class. Occupational disease claims — mesothelioma and other asbestos-related conditions, noise-induced hearing loss, hand-arm vibration syndrome, occupational asthma — frequently surface twenty, thirty or forty years after the exposure that caused them. By the time a claim is made, the employing company has often been dissolved, sold, renamed or absorbed into a group that keeps no records of its predecessors’ insurance arrangements.

That matters because EL cover in the United Kingdom is written on a causation or exposure basis rather than a claims-made basis: the policy that responds is the one in force when the injurious exposure occurred, not the one in force when the claim is made. Identifying the right historic insurer is therefore not administrative housekeeping; it is the difference between a claimant having a solvent defendant and having none. Before a central register existed, tracing depended on chance survival of paper certificates and on voluntary industry tracing agreements.

The FCA rule behind it

The obligation sits in the FCA Handbook at ICOBS 8.4. In summary, a firm effecting or carrying out contracts of insurance that include UK commercial lines employers’ liability, and a managing agent of a Lloyd’s syndicate doing the same, must produce and maintain an employers’ liability register that meets prescribed standards. The register must be a database that reliably stores accurate information for current policies and faithfully reproduces the information available for historic ones, and it must have an effective search function allowing enquiry by employer name and by period.

The rules go further than mere record-keeping. Firms must allow searches to be made by people with a potential claim, by employers, by other insurers who may be jointly liable, by intermediaries and by a qualifying tracing office; must respond to requests without undue delay; must make the register information available either on their own website or through the website of a qualifying tracing office; and must obtain an annual director’s certificate of material compliance supported by independent audit. ELTO is the qualifying tracing office through which most of the market discharges the publication limb of those requirements. The wider sourcebook in which the rule sits is dealt with elsewhere in this wiki under insurance conduct of business.

What ELTO does not solve

A tracing office can only publish what insurers hold. Where a policy predates reliable record-keeping, where the insurer itself has ceased to exist, or where an employer was uninsured in breach of the 1969 Act, a search can return nothing. Data quality on older entries is inherently weaker than on policies written since the register standards were imposed, because the rule requires historic information to be reproduced faithfully rather than reconstructed.

Where no employer and no EL insurer can be traced, a person diagnosed with diffuse mesothelioma may be eligible for a payment under the scheme established by the Mesothelioma Act 2014. Section 2 of that Act conditions eligibility on the person being unable to bring an action for damages against any employer or any insurer with whom such an employer maintained employers’ liability insurance, “because they cannot be found or no longer exist or for any other reason”. It is a scheme of last resort, not an alternative to tracing.

What employers should actually do

Three practical points. First, give your broker the employer reference number and keep it current across group companies and acquisitions — it is the field that makes a future trace work. Second, keep employers’ liability certificates, and keep them for the life of the business rather than for a fixed period; they are the primary evidence of who insured you and when, and they cost nothing to retain electronically. Third, when you buy a business or a trade, ask for the historic EL insurance record as part of due diligence, because liabilities for historic exposure can follow the corporate entity you have acquired.

Brokers should treat the register data as a live obligation rather than an inception formality. Names change, PAYE references change, and subsidiaries are added mid-term; if the data supplied is wrong, the trace fails years later when nobody is left to correct it.

Frequently asked questions

Who can search the ELTO database?

The database is publicly searchable. People with a potential claim, their representatives, employers, other insurers who may share liability, and intermediaries can all search it, and FCA rules require firms to allow those searches and to respond without undue delay.

Which policy responds to an old disease claim?

UK employers' liability cover responds on the basis of when the injurious exposure occurred, not when the claim is made. That is why a claim brought today can attach to a policy written decades ago, and why tracing the historic insurer matters so much.

What is an employer reference number and why does ELTO want it?

It is the employer's HMRC PAYE reference. It is used as a matching key on the employers' liability register because it identifies a business far more reliably than a trading name, which may have changed many times over the decades between exposure and claim.

What happens if no insurer can be traced?

The claim may be pursued against the employer itself if it still exists and is solvent. Where neither an employer nor an EL insurer can be traced, a person diagnosed with diffuse mesothelioma may be eligible for a payment under the scheme created by the Mesothelioma Act 2014.

Related entries

This entry is part of the Apex Insurance Wiki. This entry states the position as at August 2026. It is insurance information, not legal advice. Last reviewed 2026-08-22. Next review: 2027-02-22.

Can you evidence who insured your employees, and when?

Historic EL records, register data and certificate retention, reviewed properly. Bristol-based, FCA-regulated, wordings first.

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