Description

About the Event

One of the defining duties of the marine insurance relationship is the burden on the insured to provide the underwriter with sufficient information before the contract is made, for the risk to be assessed and priced. The statutory changes made in English law through the Insurance Act 2015 have been recommended for incorporation into Singaporean law. Some of these changes are legally significant. However, equally important changes can be tracked through the case law. What both trends have in common is a move towards the ‘fair presentation of the risk’ as a shared and dynamic task, involving the active participation of underwriter, broker and insured. This is in stark contrast to the apparent position in the former regime in the Marine Insurance Act 1906.

This talk will review the statutory changes in English law, and especially to the remedy, as English law begins to give shape to the ‘proportional regime’ in the Insurance Act 2015. It will also reflect on the ‘reactive’ nature of both materiality and inducement, as considered in recent litigation, and especially in Delos Shipholding v Allianz Global SE, The Win Win [2024] EWHC 719 (Comm).

About the Speaker

James Davey is Professor of Insurance & Commercial Law at the University of Bristol and Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore. He is currently Chairman of the British Insurance Law Association. He has taught and researched insurance law for more than thirty years and is co-author of Miller’s Marine War Risks, the leading practitioner guide to the insurance of political risks in marine markets. His research has been relied on in argument before the UK Supreme Court, and he has been actively involved in shaping doctrinal and regulatory policy in his field throughout his career. He acted a research consultant for litigators involved in arbitration across several jurisdictions, and in litigation before the English High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court, including the COVID-19 Test Case. His research draws upon doctrinal, economic and sociological perspectives of insurance. He is currently on research leave, working towards the first sustained study of the intersection between insurance law and discrimination law.