Reinsurance

Locke Lord's reinsurance group utilizes combined decades of experience and in-depth knowledge of the reinsurance industry to help our clients anticipate and take advantage of industry trends and reposition, expand or downsize their businesses. Our experience extends throughout the United States as well as globally, including the United Kingdom and the London market, Europe, Bermuda, Canada and Australia. Our lawyers represent clients in some of the largest and most complex disputes and transactional engagements in the property-casualty and life and health industries.

Reinsurance Transactional Work

We have experience in designing sophisticated reinsurance arrangements, including:

• Clash
• Contingency
• Alternate risk transfer
• Excess of loss
• Coinsurance
• Modified coinsurance and other sophisticated structures

We also implement various forms of collateral arrangements to provide security or comply with state laws and regulations governing financial statement credit for ceded reinsurance. Our practice includes major transactions involving assumption reinsurance, indemnity reinsurance and sale of renewal rights.

Representative Engagements – Reinsurance Transactions

• A large corporation in a series of unique reinsurance and capital enhancement transactions, which enabled certain syndicates at Lloyd's, London to satisfy Lloyd's capitalization requirements
• A major financial insurance company in various reinsurance or servicing transactions involving blocks of debit life, term life and long-term care insurance business
• A major life insurance company in its acquisition of the annuity, life and investment businesses of a large financial services group for $1.1 billion
• A leading life insurer in the sale of its individual life insurance business for $1 billion
• A national life insurance company in the reinsurance of over $3 billion of life and annuity reserve liabilities with a major U.S. reinsurer
• A Canadian insurance company in an indemnity and assumption reinsurance transaction involving the transfer of all U.S. fixed annuities and accumulation riders

Reinsurance Regulatory Work

We routinely represent clients from all parts of the country and internationally, practice before each of the state insurance departments, counsel clients on all aspects of their operations and litigate in state and federal courts. We are active in various state and federal legislative matters and routinely participate in the programs and activities of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). In fact, one of our financial and regulatory specialists formulated the NAIC guidelines for risk transfer in reinsurance transactions. Another was part of the executive team at the New York Department of Insurance that approved the formation of Lloyd's R&R.

Examples of our regulatory work:

• Represented government agencies in drafting insurance legislation and regulations. Our Firm was appointed as one of only a few U.S. counsels for transactional/regulatory work for one of the world's largest reinsurers. Our lawyers also assisted leading U.S. and European reinsurers in discussions with foreign insurance regulators to develop favorable terms of reinsurance regulation
• Form and capitalize domestic and offshore reinsurance companies
• Counsel on licensing, TPA and MGA matters, accreditation and financial statement credit issues, security and collateral issues under reinsurance treaties (including statutory accounting issues), market conduct issues, use of terrorism exclusions, financial reinsurance/surplus relief issues, rights and remedies in the event of the insolvency of the cedent or reinsurer, use of cut-through endorsements and analysis of the enforceability of arbitration remedies in domestic and international reinsurance treaties. Our lawyers developed novel regulatory structures — used as the market standard for the last 10 years — to facilitate writing by non-U.S. insurers of reinsurance nationwide
• Negotiate and obtain regulatory approval of various forms of administration agreements and structuring and/or unwinding reinsurance pools involving affiliated and non-affiliated insurers and reinsurers
• Represent clients in the design and formation of offshore captive insurers, including single-parent captives, association captives and rent-a-captives. Corporate, regulatory and tax advice concerning the formation and operation of these captives
• Advise on the tax deductibility of premium payments, controlled foreign corporation (CFC) issues and related person insurance income (RPII) issues

Litigation and Dispute Resolution

We have extensive experience in handling high-level disputes in virtually all lines of property and casualty and life and health reinsurance. We represent clients in cases addressing issues such as:

• Late notice
• Transaction-related purchase price disputes
• Rescission and misrepresentation
• Coverage disputes
• Reserve methodology and calculation disputes
• Application of actuarial and statutory accounting principles
• Rights to reinsurance collateral
• Duty to disclose material change in risk
• Scope of ECO and XPL clauses
• Right of direct action against reinsurer upon ceding company's insolvency
• Number of occurrences
• Salvage and subrogation
• Loss adjustment expense allocation
• Aggregation
• Net retained lines
• Premium disputes
• Follow the fortunes
• Claims cooperation
• Set-offs
• Right-to-associate clauses

We offer comprehensive resolution services and, where a favorable compromise cannot be achieved, we provide our clients with aggressive and effective arbitration, litigation and trial skills. Our decades-long experience working with individual arbitrators and umpires on various issues enable us to provide clients with valuable insights into the strategic options for selecting a particular panel and presenting their case to the panel.

In keeping with the national and international breadth and diversity of this practice, we routinely arbitrate and litigate reinsurance disputes in various forums, including arbitrations across the globe and disputes in U.S. state and federal courts, including New York, California, Florida, Illinois, Texas, Massachusetts, Washington, D.C., Alabama and Arizona.

Visit our Insurance & Reinsurance Blog for the latest news and developments.