Welcome to the latest in the series of blogs from Fenchurch Law: 100 cases every policyholder needs to know. An opinionated and practical guide to the most important insurance decisions relating to the London / English insurance markets, all looked at from a pro-policyholder perspective.
Some cases are correctly decided and positive for policyholders. We celebrate those cases as The Good.
Some cases are, in our view, bad for policyholders, wrongly decided, and in need of being overturned. We highlight those decisions as The Bad.
On 24 September 2020, the European Commission (the Commission) relaunched its Capital Markets Union project with the publication of its ambitious new initiative,"A Capital Markets Union for people and businesses – new action plan" (the Action Plan). The purpose of the Action Plan is to reduce the current fragmented approach in financial markets and to tackle some of the remaining barriers to a single European capital market.
On 29 September 2020, Chief Justice Smellie QC handed down his judgment in the Matter of Premier Assurance Group SPC Ltd (in Controllership) (FSD Cause No. 210 of 2020) confirming the powers of the controllers appointed under section 24(2)(h) of the Insurance Law, 2010 (the "Insurance Law") so as to enable them to exercise their powers as against the "world at large". In doing so, the Chief Justice held that the Court has an inherent jurisdiction to supplement section 24 of the Insurance Law to "fill the practical gap" left by that provision.
Background
The Swiss Insurance Oversight Act has been subject to a partial revision in order to bring the protection of insurance customers in line with international developments and to improve the competitiveness of the Swiss insurance sector. The new provisions include a new insolvency restructuring regime, a customer categorisation making supervisory requirements proportional to the protection required by customers as well as new rules of conduct applicable to insurance undertakings and intermediaries.
Status as of 3/11 11:40 am CET
Table of content
Good afternoon.
Following are our summaries of the civil decisions of the Court of Appeal for Ontario for the weeks of September 7 to 11 and September 14 to 18, 2020.
The past two weeks saw ten substantive decisions released by the Court of Appeal. Topics covered included bankruptcy & insolvency, contracts (freight), enforcement of letters of request by foreign courts, family law and insurance, as well as the usual procedural decisions relating to extensions of time and appellate jurisdiction.
Wishing everyone an enjoyable weekend.
Who should bear the risk and ultimately the financial burden of insolvent wrongdoers when determining the liability of defendants to a plaintiff? The defendants, or the plaintiff?
The Law Commission revisits this question in an Issues Paper, published last week, after recommending in 1998 to retain the traditional position.1
The Federal Government has proposed a major strengthening of APRA’s crisis management powers and has released a consultation paper containing wide-ranging proposals for financial services reform that are now open to industry comment.
In May a Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services concluded its report into the collapse of Trio Capital Ltd which will have significant repercussions for financial lines insurers in Australia.
What distinguishes the Trio Capital collapse from the other major financial collapses in Australia in recent years, of Westpoint and Storm Financial, is that Trio involved a fraud. The enquiry adopted observations by Justice Peter Garling of the New South Wales Supreme Court describing the scheme as:
On 5 October 2011, the NSW Supreme Court upheld an application pursuant to s 440D(1) of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) (the Corporations Act) for leave to bring and continue proceedings against a defendant under voluntary administration.