Case One — Solutions
HIH Insurance Limited:
Inherent Risk Assessment, Legal Liability, Ethics and Audit Reports
The case can be used either progressively through the course using questions relating to chapters as they are taught or as a consolidating case at the end of the course. Where possible, students should be encouraged to concurrently research information in the press relating to HIH while they undertake the case. Clearly, the points for discussion may change as further information becomes available. As the legal proceedings in the case are still in progress, the suggested discussion points are not intended in any way to comment on or compromise any investigation. All information provided in the case is available in the public
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There is no formal structure for the maintenance of Prudential Margins although many companies hold a buffer or prudential margin with an 80–90 per cent chance of covering claims (Four Corners report). Many of the transactions in the insurance industry are complex and require high levels of judgment.
• HIH’s position within the industry
HIH was a global insurance company. Price competition was particularly hard on HIH as a substantial portion of their insurance was in workers' compensation. HIH moved into the workers' compensation market in California, which was very competitive and high risk, which led to a financial disaster and losses of $200 m. HIH moved into professional indemnity and public liability insurance. Other high-risk competitive markets entered included Marine and Aviation and natural disasters as well an unbelievable entry in the area of Film Finance. In this area HIH insured films guaranteeing the film in the event of a loss. Some of these films were never even made. One loss prior to the collapse was for $100 m. HIH reportedly had little experience in the film industry and the film industry had a reputation for losing money.
Mr Charles Pratten (Chairman of Rural and General Insurance) held discussions about HIH with the Insurance and Superannuation Commission as early as 1997. APRA is being heavily criticised for failing to take any action. The Australian Institute of Actuaries and Ernst and Young independently published papers
One of the principal grounds for rejecting insurance claims is that the claim is not covered by the terms of the policy, or is specifically excluded. The rule that coverage provisions should be interpreted broadly and exclusion clauses should be interpreted narrowly is really just a corollary of the Contra Proferentem rule which applies in the event of ambiguity i.e. it is the insurer who likely drafted the insurance contract and construing coverage provisions broadly, or exclusion clauses narrowly, will be to the detriment of the insurer as the party who drafted the contract. The construction of exclusion clauses and coverage provisions helps justify the objective intention of the contract. This is the intention which the court considers, a reasonable person in the position of the contracting parties, would have had. It is submitted that coverage provisions should be broad and encompassing and exclusion clauses should be narrow. However, before such a conclusion is reached, this paper will aim to justify the reasoning behind such a claim analysing arguments for and against such a proposition, drawing upon the landmark case Darlington Futures Ltd v Delco Australia Pty Ltd to help relate the discussion to issues raised by such considerations.
Various attempts have been made by Equitable Life to avoid insolvency, primarily at the expense of policyholders, but it was too late. The liability, worth £1.5 billion at the time it froze the value of all current with-profit policies, was going to swell even more if interest rate were to fall further, and nothing could possibly stop this from happening. There is still a lot of debate about the adequacy of regulation, and possible measures the Financial Services Authority (FSA) should have imposed on Equitable Life and other life insurers when it formally took over responsibility for the regulation of insurance in January 1999. There are also many fingers pointed at regulators who did not express any concern over the liabilities of Equitable Life in the early 1990s, when there was possibly still enough time to reverse the misfortune. One thing for sure: by failing to properly hedge its liabilities, Equitable robbed its policyholders of their peaceful retirement, and mistakes of such an enormous scale should never happen again. On 2/12/00, The Times published a
Canadians pay wildly different amounts of money to heat our houses: The National Post has reported that a couple in Hammond, Ontario, pay about 500 dollars a month to heat their renovated farmhouse while a single man in Schreiber, Ontario, pays between 160 and 220 to heat his three-bedroom home.
Our primary means of research was the internet. We found most of our sources by exploring the many professional actuarial groups, and looking through their collections of articles and periodicals. We found that our best sources were from professional organizations such as the Society of Actuaries, and the Casualty Actuarial Society, both publish periodicals with reliable articles from accredited actuaries. This method of searching through articles put out by professional organizations was most effective for us because all of the articles were written by fully qualified actuaries who have first hand experience working through the ethical conflicts that we describe in our report. All our articles are first reviewed by the professional organization that publishes them, to ensure that they contain accurate, and relevant information, which allowed us to keep all our conclusions professional and our arguments strong.
Regularly, this sort of expansion results from misfortunes experienced by protects by a couple of their strategy holders. Besides, an expansion in claims has further added to the higher scope costs. Despite the fact that most back up plans give rates as indicated by their misfortunes, some organizations keep on rewarding incredible drivers with rebates.
Hylant’s reserve practices are fundamentally sound, reserving each claim for the ultimate amount they expect to pay based on factual information. Reserve analysis continues throughout the life of the claim where reserves are adjusted as the claim facts develops.
Should an individual’s ability to learn something determine the environment and class group they are put in? There are so many view that could be described from the previous question. The view point I will explore today is the individuals who have special education class. These individuals most of the time have a lack of pursuit of happiness, liberty, and life,
Concerns have arisen of a possible lawsuit involving an area of law known as negligence and liability. This memo outlines the principles of this area of law in order to be properly prepared should the firm face any legal consequences. It aims to illustrate under what circumstances can the firm be affected with potential legal action in this area.
In 1932 the American Medical Association (AMA) adopted a strong position against prepaid group practices, favoring instead indemnity-type insurance that protects the policyholder from expenses by reimbursement (Jones & Bartlett, 2007). As one of the first health policies in the U.S., indemnity plans are considered
Of the 25 claim files reviewed, I found no evidence of reserve deficiencies or negative reserve trends. However, I did discover two claims where the reserves were increased on multiple occasions in response to receipt of legal invoices. This discovery was not within compliance with Hylant’s reserve practices. My findings were discussed with Bill Petro, who agreed with my findings and advised he was aware of the non-compliance issues. Further commenting that he also discovered one of these files during his quality control reviews. Mr. Petro assured me, the matter is being addressed with adjuster and corrective action has been taken. With that noted, I did not interpret this as a negative reserve trend within the claims department, but more of
Overall, I found the claims for both pooling plans effectively managed by Hylant’s claim staff. My review found no deficits in either of their reserving practices or management of their claims. Hylant’s claims operation benefits from strong employee retention and favorable state immunity laws allowing their claims department to operate at an above average level. Based on my review these pooling plans should have a neutral impact on the overall performance on our treaties.
In an effort to guard against, Bad Faith litigation, Kinsale has instructed their claim staff, to refrain from documenting their claim files with any type of claims analysis. Kinsale is of the opinion; Bad Faith litigation is occurring with greater frequency against insurers. Consequently, insurers are under a constant threat by the plaintiff’s bar, looking to expose carriers to liability, by identifying any missteps in their claims handling processes. Therefore, as a protective measure, Kinsale restricts their claim staff from posting any type of claim analysis and-or opinions based statements in their claim files, avoiding the litigation discovery pitfalls of misinterpreting the claim staff’s written communications. Conversely, the lack of
Health insurance plans can be difficult to understand for people that don't deal with it on a daily basis. Due to the insurance jargon in the policy, all to often people feel like it was written in another language. However, it is very important for you to understand exactly how your policy works and what type of coverage you do have. The last thing you want to happen is to find yourself with medical bills that your plan didn't cover or were higher than you thought they should be because you didn't understand your policy. The most frequently misunderstood parts of the health plan is the deductible and coinsurance. This article will take a look at both.
Commercial health insurances are health insurances that cover medical and health expenses for those that are already insured. For example, since commercial health insurances is for profit and is not offered through a government entity, these health insurances are usually offered through group insurances (“What Is Commercial Health,” n.d.). In many instances, commercial health insurances will be offered through the individual’s employer. Typically, these insurances will have a monthly or even a bi-weekly premium that will be deducted from an employee’s paycheck. Depending on how the commercial health insurance is planned, employees will usually see a payment of the entire monthly premium or a percentage of it in their paycheck.
Insurance is am agreement between two parties in which one party promises to compensate for future losses in return for a reoccurring payment. It protects an entity (such as an individual or company) against unexpected losses. Some forms of insurance are compulsory by law whilst others are optional. An insurance policy is a contract between the insured and the insurer. In the case of a certain event, the insurer agrees to pay the insured a lump sum of money in exchange for a monthly premium.