Insurance Law Monthly

Part VII of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 requires judicial approval for the transfer of any insurance business. Various important procedural steps must first be taken, and the transfer must be supported by an expert report and by the regulators, but even then the court has the right to refuse approval in its discretion. Most applications are approved if they have cleared the procedural hurdles, but the decision of Snowden J in Re Prudential Assurance Company Ltd [2019] EWHC 2245 (Ch) is an important exception. This case shows that the discretion is particularly important where the policy is long-term in its nature.

Section 152(2) of the Road Traffic Act 1988 allows an insurer to seek a declaration that it is has the right to avoid a motor policy for material non-disclosure or misrepresentation. The circumstances in which avoidance is available have been severely restricted by the Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Act 2012 (for consumers) and the Insurance Act 2015 (for businesses), but fraud or recklessness suffices in both cases.

In Certain Underwriters at Lloyd’s of London v Allianz Australia Insurance Ltd [2018] VSC 735 the Supreme Court of Victoria considered a series of causation issues raised by the common situation where A’s employees work on B’s premises and the parties make arrangements for the allocation of liability- through insurance and indemnity – in the event of an injury to an employee.

The effect of the EU’s jurisdictional rules set out in the Brussels Regulation Recast, Commission Regulation 1215/2012, is to set out specific rules for the protection of policyholders. In general terms, an assured can only be sued in the member state of his domicile, whereas an assured has a choice of fora in which to sue the insurer, including the courts of the member state of the assured’s own domicile. Article 13 of the Regulation extends that principle to liability insurance by allowing the victim to sue the liability insurers of the assured in the courts of the victim’s own domicile where the law applicable to the claim against the assured so permits.

The New Zealand High Court has, in a series of recent cases, discussed various issues relating to the assessment of sums to be paid to the assured following the occurrence of an insured peril. Although the cases arise in the unique context of earthquake damage, the principles set out in them are applicable to all property policies and indeed the wordings used are similar to those in the London market.