Insurance Contract Law Draft Bill

The Law Commission has produced its first concrete proposals on business insurance contract law in the form of a consultation on a partial draft Bill. The Bill is a mixed bag of early sketches and satisfying solutions and almost the only thing that can be said with certainty is that it is incomplete. The proposals also cover marine insurance and indeed significant modifications are made to the Marine Insurance Act 1906. The consultation closed on 21 February 2014.

The Bill addresses selected issues concerning business insurance, leaving out consumer insurance, the thorniest issues of which were resolved with the entry into force of the Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Act 2012 on 6 April 2013. The selected issues are a new test for the duty of disclosure, clarification on the remedy for post-contractual good faith, late payment of claims and fraudulent claims.