Reinsurance

Consistent with Hinshaw's insurance industry pedigree, the firm has for many years handled cutting-edge issues involving reinsurance and reinsurance dispute resolution. Through our extensive long-standing relationships with insurers and reinsurers, we have a unique ability to understand and address these clients' complex transactions and agreements. Our diverse knowledge and experience positions us to address any issue that may be raised in a reinsurance litigation or arbitration.

Our reinsurance experience includes representing clients not only in litigation, arbitration and dispute resolution, but also providing advice and planning on insurance and reinsurance issues arising in the normal course of business. Hinshaw's broad insurance practice provides our reinsurance attorneys the unique resources of more than 80 years of experience and an understanding of all aspects of the insurance marketplace, including claims administration, policy wording, premium accounting, product development, regulatory issues, and underwriting.

Hinshaw's transactional and regulatory attorneys have represented clients in the purchase of lender-placed and crop insurers, which are uniquely subject to both state and federal regulation. In addition, our regulatory attorneys have worked with international regulators helping build compliance frameworks to accommodate the NAIC Solvency Modernization Initiative, advised on international tax and reinsurance issues, provided in-bound investors with a thorough understanding of the US market, and advised on Group Supervision matters. Our experience and national presence make Hinshaw ideally suited to assist you in managing regulatory change.

We are well positioned to represent clients on reinsurance matters worldwide. We have represented insurers, reinsurers and retrocessionaires throughout the United States, Asia, Canada, and Europe. Our partners and associates in the reinsurance practice area are well versed in a wide range of reinsurance issues, including:

• adequacy of disclosure on placement
• allocation
• claims handling
• commutations
• declaratory judgment expenses
• financial reporting requirements
• follow-the-fortunes and follow-the-settlements
• formation and regulation of captives
• letters of credit
• net retention warranties
• number of occurrences
• offset
• pre-answer security
• premium and commission accounting
• regulatory restrictions
• reinsurance contract formation and interpretation
• right of inspection
• scope of coverage

Our attorneys have also made highly regarded contributions to several prestigious publications, including the "Reinsurance" chapter in LexisNexis' California Insurance Law and Practice, and the Tort and Insurance Law Journal. Hinshaw lawyers who focus in this area have spoken, organized, and chaired continuing legal education programs on various reinsurance topics. They are also included in several prestigious listings, such as Euromoney publications of the world's leading insurance and reinsurance lawyers and Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business.

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Legal Updates

Among our attorneys' successes in the area of reinsurance dispute resolution are:

• recovery of millions from a reinsurer on successive facultative certificates reinsuring claims-made professional liability policies
• winning the extraordinary remedy of rescission of a reinsurance contract on three separate occasions: once in a jury trial, once in an arbitration, and once from the bench
• securing the vacatur of an arbitral award based on the panel's "gross error of law"
• convincing a federal district court that, despite follow-the-fortunes provisions in two reinsurance contracts, the reinsurer was not obligated to cover extracontractual obligations payments the ceding company had made to its policyholder arising out of the ceding company's bad faith
• collecting millions from reinsurers located in Europe, Asia and Central and South America
• demonstrating to a federal circuit court of appeals that a reinsurance dispute had to be litigated, not arbitrated
• persuading federal courts—including a federal circuit court of appeals—that sovereign immunity was inapplicable in private reinsurance arbitrations
• establishing before a state insurance department tribunal that a liquidated entity was not the reinsurer, thus paving the way for the cedent's collection in full from its true reinsurer
• representing a major Japanese insurer in a reinsurance arbitration with a U.S. domestic ceding company in which the central issue concerned nondisclosure of material information
• representing London Market Companies in a series of litigations and arbitrations against U.S. domestic ceding companies in which the contested facts involved misrepresentation and nondisclosure of material facts
• representing a leading Portuguese insurer in litigation against a U.S. domestic company and a London broker in which the alleged misconduct by the ceding company's agent was asserted as a basis for avoidance
• representing a major multiline insurer in a series of arbitrations resolving issues arising from the use of insurance products as part of a covert structured financing through special purpose vehicles, arranged between a major bank and a large energy company