December 2017

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News from AIDA - Three years of planning culminates in APIC17


by Chris Rodd, AIDA Presidential Council representative – Australia

After three years of preparation and planning for APIC17, we met in Singapore for an exceptional meeting.

The AIDA Presidential Council met at Stamford Raffles, the conference venue, on Tuesday 17 October. A key focus was the exceptional work conducted by the council and, in particular, by Ioannis Rokas, from Greece, in developing the new AIDA website and discussions about the forthcoming World Congress in Rio de Janeiro on 10-13 October 2018.

The four conference themes for the World Congress are new technologies; disclosure duties; insurers' corporate governance; and pollution insurance.

Several AILA members are preparing Australia's submissions to questionnaires on those topics.

On Wednesday 18 October, 10 AIDA working parties convened at well-attended meetings that attracted participants from all over the world, largely because of the topics' relevance and the calibre of the speakers.

The meeting on climate change and catastrophe, chaired by Tim Hardy, from London, had three speakers  – Richard Traub, from the USA; Richard Johnstone, from New Zealand; and  Anthony Sassi, from Hong Kong. Topics ranged from hurricanes Harvey and Irma to an Asian perspective on managing concentrated exposures for insured and uninsured losses .

Concurrently the personal insurance and pensions working party attracted an exceptional line up of speakers, including AIDA President Prof Jerome Kullman, from France; Ian Enright, from Australia; Andrea Signorino Barbat, from Uraguay; JJ Lin, from Taiwan; Prof Samim Unan, from Turkey; and Ivy Cassa, from Brazil. The topic was consumer credit guarantees.

I had  the honour to chair the first meeting of the newly formed working party on dispute resolution for insurance contracts. It focused on alternative dispute resolution in six jurisdictions. Speakers were Mark Kelly, from New Zealand; Craig Marvinney, USA; Daleen Millard, from South Africa; Kevin Kwek, from Singapore; Don O'Halloran, from Australia; and Aaron Le Marquer, from Thailand. It was a superb overview of dispute resolution in six markedly different jurisdictions.

Concurrently with the dispute resolution workshop, Jorge Angell, from Spain, chaired the reinsurance working party meeting with presentations from Ian Enright, Australia; Prof Rob Merkin, UK; Simon Cooper and Rosie Ng, Hong Kong; and Swiss Re's Florian Kohler. Topics included reinsurance implications for cyber risk; disclosure regimes for reinsurance; and how the back-to-back presumption applies to life reinsurance treaties.

After lunch there were six more working party meetings covering motor; marine; state supervision; general principles of insurance law and distribution of insurance products (a combined meeting of the two working parties); and civil liability.

New technologies was the focus of the motor working party which included two speakers from Italy, Sara Landini and Giacomo Pongelli, with Peggy Sharon, from Israel.

Marine insurance attracted speakers from four jurisdictions, including Tom Shinya, Andrew Tulloch, Dr Han Yong Qiang, and Ozlem Gurses, with topics as diverse as the role of insurance in the offshore oil and gas industry to blockchain and cargo insurance.

The state supervision working party focused on regulatory challenges for insurtechs with European and Asian speakers contributing to a well-attended meeting .

The combined meeting of general principles of insurance law and distribution of insurance products had presentations from four speakers. Pierpaolo Marano, from Italy, spoke on robot advisers and insurance distribution in the EU; Andrea Signorino, from Uruguay, gave a Latin American perspective on insurance distribution; Kaun–Chun Johnny Chang, from Taiwan, covered privacy issues associated with telematics; and Gloria Faria, from Brazil, spoke on regulation of insurtechs in Brazil .

The last working party meeting was civil liability and had another international array of speakers. David McKenna, from Australia, and Richard Nicolaides, USA, addressed vicarious liability for international acts of employees. Caroline Thomas, from Hong Kong, and Richard Nicolaides then talked on causation in the context of exclusion clauses. Adolfo Paolini, from Italy, addressed the interaction of policy exclusions in D&O and professional indemnity policies.

The variety, calibre of speakers and content of the AIDA Singapore working party meetings was exceptional and a credit to all those involved in organising the event. It was particularly encouraging to see the numbers of people attending their first AIDA event and the feedback received from all those who participated in the first Asian AIDA working party meetings.

 
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Resolve is the official publication of the Australian Insurance Law Association and
the New Zealand Insurance Law Association.