The Financial Ombudsman Service (the FOS) has recently published eight short case studies to help firms understand how complaints about sales of payment protection insurance (PPI) will be assessed. The case studies are available on the FOS website. 
Read More UK: The Financial Ombudsman Service Publishes Payment Protection Insurance Case Studies

In a letter from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (the “NAIC”) to both House and Senate leaders, state insurance commissioners urged lawmakers to designate a non-voting seat for state banking, insurance and securities regulators on the Financial Stability Oversight Council (the “FSOC”). 
Read More State Insurance Commissioners Make Their Case for Inclusion in the Financial Stability Oversight Counsel

The Association of British Insurers (the ABI) has recently published a consultation paper on its statement of best practice for critical illness cover. Please click here to view the consultation paper. The ABI originally published the statement in 1999 following a report by the Office of Fair Trading on health insurance. The aim of the statement is to ensure that customers continue to get meaningful, understandable and affordable critical illness cover that meets their needs. 
Read More UK: The Association of British Insurers Consults on Statement of Best Practice for Critical Illness Cover

On 29 April 2010, European Advocate General Kokott gave her opinion in the case of Akzo Nobel Chemicals Ltd & Akcros Chemicals Ltd v European Commission. She was asked to consider whether “the protection of communications between lawyers and their clients (‘legal professional privilege’), guaranteed as a fundamental right under the law of the European Union, also extended to internal exchanges of opinions and information between the management of an undertaking and an ‘enrolled in-house lawyer’ employed by that undertaking?” 
Read More EU: European Advocate General Opinion Concludes No Privilege for In-house Lawyers

The Financial Services Authority (the FSA) has recently announced a temporary rule which will allow customers with complaints about the purchase of a payment protection insurance (PPI) policy more time within which to refer it to the Financial Ombudsman Service (the FOS). This temporary rule has been introduced without consultation. 
Read More UK: The Financial Services Authority Introduces Temporary PPI Rule

MP Jonathan Djanogly, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Justice, has confirmed to Parliament that the new Government will not seek to overturn the House of Lords’ decision that asymptomatic pleural plaques were not compensatable. He also confirmed that the Government would “proceed with the implementation of the previously announced limited extra-statutory scheme to provide one-off payments to individuals who had begun, but not resolved, a legal claim for compensation for pleural plaques at the time of the House of Lords judgment.” 
Read More UK: New Government Confirms Labour’s Pleural Plaques Decision

Recently, a Pennsylvania federal court dismissed a bad faith claim against an insurer on the grounds that the claim was subsumed by the plaintiff’s breach of contract claim in the same proceeding. 
Read More Pennsylvania Federal Court Dismisses Bad Faith Claim as Subsumed by Breach of Contract Claim, But Allows Statutory Bad Faith Claim