Insurance

Insurance: claims litigation, policy wording and coverage advice

Our core Insurance practice is part of this broader Litigation and Arbitration practice, which also includes a strong Supreme Court litigation practice. Lawyers from other law firms often turn to De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek to handle their insurance matters before the Netherlands Supreme Court.

Our Insurance practice advises corporate clients on a broad range of contentious insurance matters, including D&O insurance, professional liability insurance, Bankers Blanket Bond and general and product liability insurance (GPL). Our team is regularly asked to review clients’ entire insurance portfolios and to advise on policy wording. As our corporate clients often have global insurance portfolios, cases handled by the Insurance practice are frequently international in nature. The group handles many coverage disputes, generally representing large corporate insureds.

Eelco Meerdink heads the Insurance practice group. He is a specialist in insurance law and has broad experience in both contentious insurance matters, particularly arbitration and litigation on coverage issues, and non-contentious matters, particularly strategic advice on clients’ global insurance programmes.

Insurance: M&A, capital raisings and insurance regulatory practice

Our corporate lawyers assist a number of international insurance companies with their business requirements in the Netherlands. Our clients entrust us with significant mergers and acquisitions, (regulatory) capital-raising transactions, large outsourcing arrangements, global custody and securities lending, as well as investment management mandates. Clients also recognise our expertise when seeking advice on which complex supervisory rules they are subject to. We have a strong insurance regulatory practice. Two factors in particular contribute to the strength of the insurance regulatory practice:

• The Insurance practice forms part of a Financial Markets Regulation practice, which is considered to have considerable depth and breadth. This practice advises clients (most of which are large national and international financial institutions, including some of the largest internationally operating insurance groups based in the Netherlands) on the application of the rules and regulations on the supervision of financial markets. It has a number of experienced partners who not only have long-standing transactional experience, but who are also actively involved in regulatory developments, both on a national and European level. This makes the Financial Markets Regulation practice extremely well-positioned to meet financial institutions’ practical needs. The practice frequently publishes on these developments and often works with legislative and supervisory authorities in the Netherlands in consultative processes. De Brauw is  part of an expert group that is preparing for the implementation of the European Solvency II legislation (constituting a major overhaul of the regulation of the European insurance sector) in Dutch legislation.
• The strength of the Insurance practice’s client base, consisting of large national and international insurance companies, including the largest healthcare insurer in the Netherlands (healthcare insurance accounting for more than 50% of gross written premiums in the Netherlands over 2010.

Should you have any further questions about our insurance practice, please do not hesitate to contact Dennis Horeman, a recognised insurance law specialist who regularly acts for corporate insureds.