This updates our July 31, 2009 posting.  On August 19, 2009, Michigan’s House Insurance Committee advanced the package of “bad faith” bills (House bills 4244, 4844, 4858, 5020, 5144-5151) by voting to toughen penalties for insurance companies that deny or delay valid claims. 

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Read More Michigan’s House Insurance Committee Advances “Bad Faith” Legislation

The administrators of Lehman Brothers International (Europe) have been intending to propose a scheme of arrangement under the English Companies Act to enable them to distribute several billions of dollars of assets held on trust by the company in the face of difficulties in establishing who was entitled to the trust assets; in particular, they had not received responses from all potentially interested clients, could not rely on the accuracy of the company’s records and had not received all the information requested from sub-custodians and other intermediaries. 

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Read More UK: Court Rules it Has No Jurisdiction to Sanction Scheme Concerning Trust Assets Held by Lehman UK

Florida Senator Bill Nelson recently sent a letter to President Obama asking the administration to streamline federal assistance available to homeowners with allegedly tainted Chinese drywall.  Nelson requested “White House mobilization and coordination of all federal resources that could help homeowners” and stressed the need for an inter-agency Drywall Task Force to coordinate efforts and a “one-stop federal Drywall Assistance Center” that could provide information and resources directly to impacted homeowners. 

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Read More Chinese Drywall – Senators Seek Expansion of Federal Assistance for Impacted Homeowners

The first half of the month-long congressional recess has significantly dimmed hopes for a bipartisan agreement on healthcare reform in the Senate, due to contentious, rancorous town hall meetings and new polls suggesting eroding public support for the Democrats’ healthcare reform proposals. 

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Read More Bipartisan Agreement on Healthcare Reform Remains Elusive; Democrats Considering Splitting Bill into Two Pieces

On 28 February 2009, the National People’s Congress resolved to amend the China Insurance Law. This was the second revision since the insurance law was first enacted in China on 1 October 1995. The amendment will come into force on 1 October 2009 and will constitute a comprehensive reform of the present insurance law. …
Read More China: Insurance Law Reform in China

The New York Insurance Department issued proposed Regulation No. 192 (11 NYCRR) (the “Proposed Regulation”) establishing minimum reserve and nonforfeiture standards for preneed life insurance policies (i.e. policies that provide a prearrangement agreement for goods and services to be provided upon the death of the insured). …
Read More New York Issues Proposed Regulation to establish Minimum Standards for Determining Reserve Liabilities and Nonforfeiture Values for Preneed Life Insurance

EAPD has recently published the second electronic version of its ‘Commercial Litigation Review’ (August 2009), which focuses on the hot topics currently facing businesses in the UK and throughout the world. 

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Read More Publication: Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge’s Commercial Litigation Review (August 2009 edition)

Due largely to lower life annuity sales, total premiums in the Chilean insurance market fell 12.3% for the first half of 2009 when compared to the first half of 2008.  Total premiums for the first half of 2009 were US$ 2.89 billion. 

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Read More Chilean Insurance Market Contracts By 12%

On August 4, 2009, Delaware Insurance Commissioner Karen Weldin Stewart announced that the Department of Insurance (the “Department”) has established the new Bureau of Captive and Financial Insurance Products (the “Bureau”) to dedicate more resources to the regulation of captives and make the regulatory process more efficient. 

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Read More Delaware Department of Insurance Establishes Captive Bureau