In-sure 

This month's edition looks at the new FSA Travel Insurance Regulation and the European Commission proposal for an EU-wide guarantee scheme. Also in this issue, the European Council's progress report on Solvency II, regulatory transparency......

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Reinsurance E-Alert

Claims co-operation clauses: the duty to co-operate outlives rejection of the claim by Reinsurers

Lexington Insurance Company & ors v Multinacional De Seguros S.A. (2008)

This recent Commercial Court decision provides useful guidance on the application of claims co-operation clauses that operate as a condition precedent to reinsurers' liability. Amongst other things, the Court had to consider whether reinsurers can still require compliance with such a clause after claiming they are discharged from liability because of a breach of that clause.

As in the recent Court of Appeal decision in Kosmar Villa Holiday Plc v Trustees of Syndicate 1243 (2008) (see previous http://www.runoffmarket.com/Reinsurance/Newsletter/Insurer-can-take-over-the-conduct-of-a-claim-and-repudiate-liability.html), the Court took, in our view, the common sense decision and ruled that reinsurers should not be prevented from raising a number of defences whilst investigating the claim, and that it was in both parties' interest to encourage continued compliance with the co-operation clause during those investigations.

May 2008

A Class Act Can Be Hard To Follow : Recent Initiatives on "Collective Redress".

Where the US leads, Europe often follows, but not yet, at least, with class actions. There has been a great deal of legal discussion in Europe on the subject of class actions and collective redress. Collective redress enshrines the process whereby large groups of claimants band together to seek redress as a large group.

In the US, there have been numerous class actions brought against global companies with attempts by the US Claimant Bar to bring the actions on bahalf of shareholders based in Europe. Not many of these attempts have been successful, but what these attempts highlight is the difficulty for European claimants with legitimate claims to benefit from global settlements with defendant companies. 

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May 2008

This paper examines the six principal strategies for dealing with discontinued business and their relative merits, starting with the least pro-active and moving through to some of the more sophisticated methods used to achieve finality.

As well as strategies for insurance companies, the paper also considers how these apply to Lloyd's syndicates. 

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May 2008

Seele Austria GmbH & Co. v Tokio Marine Europe Insurance Ltd [2008] EWCA Civ 441.

In their Property & Construction Top Ten Isnurance Booklet 2007 Davies Arnold Cooper reviewed ten significant decisions during 2007, including the first instance decision of Seele Austria GmbH & Co. v Tokio Marine Europe Insurance Ltd. An appeal was heard in February 2008 and judgement was recently handed down. The decisions of both courts will be of interest to those concerned with contractor's all risks cover and the perennial issues of the interpretation of 'damage' and 'defect' under such policies.

May 2008

Last month the FSA published a large report into data security in financial services. The conclusion of the report is that poor data security is currently a serious, widespread and high-impact risk to the FSA's objective to reduce financial crime. This month Parliament has given the Information Commission new powers to impose substantial fines on firms that deliberately or recklessly commit serious breaches of the Data Protection Act.