Australia: Reinsurance

As the Middle East conflict continues to disrupt global energy markets, Australian businesses are confronting a familiar threat in an unfamiliar form. This is not a direct war risk in the traditional sense. It is something more insidious, a fuel driven economic shock that is rapidly cascading into balance sheets, boardrooms and ultimately insurance claims.

The chapter provides a practical overview of the legal, regulatory and market issues shaping insurance disputes in Australia.

This article explains the decision and reasoning in King Trader and then examine how it could be relevant to contractual interpretation in Australia.

Express provisions are the best way for reinsurers to secure inspection rights over their reinsured's books and records.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse has been running in Australia since 2013.

This decision may undercut the normal policy that reinsurance proceeds should be quarantined from paying out creditors.

The recent case of Gordian Runoff Limited v Westport Insurance Corporation [2010] NSWCA 57 gives arbitration users more confidence as to the finality of arbitral awards by confirming that the grounds for challenging an award are very limited. It also recognises the importance of upholding arbitration's key attributes of providing a commercial resolution in an efficient and timely manner, by not imposing on arbitrators the same procedural formalities and technicalities applied to judges (such as

Commonwealth Steel Company Ltd v Certain Underwriters At Lloyds Comprising Syndicate - Construing a commercial contract of insurance- can more than one policy of insurance respond to a mesothelioma claim?

In Zheng v Cai [2009] HCA 52 the High Court held that payments made by a church to an injured plaintiff were not to be considered in the plaintiff’s economic loss assessment.