Past events

Smart Contracts for Insurance

Smart contracts technology has great potential to impact positively upon the design, formation and performance of insurance contracts. This lecture will explore potential uses of the technology within the insurance space and deal with legal issues that arise as a result, including both private law issues and regulation and compliance issues. The lecture is being scheduled to coincide with a report on smart contracts shortly to be published by Lloyd’s on which Dr Goldby is a contributing author.

Dr. Miriam Goldby is a Reader in Shipping, Insurance and Commercial Law, at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London. She is the Deputy Director of the Centre’s Insurance Law Institute and Director of its LLM in International Shipping Law in London. Apart from articles and book chapters, she has published three books: Electronic Documents in Maritime Trade (OUP, 2013), the second edition of which will be published in 2019; Systemic Risk and the Future of Insurance Regulation edited with A. Georgosouli, (Informa 2015); and The Role of Arbitration in Shipping Law, edited with L Mistelis (OUP, 2016). She is vice chair of ICC UK’s Commercial Law and Practice Committee and a member of the Comité Maritime International’s Standing Committee on the Carriage of Goods. She is also deputy editor of the British Insurance Law Association (BILA) Journal.

With the insurance market going through a period of significant change Lloyd’s is responding to ensure the market is positioned to take advantage of those developments as it aims to remain the market of choice. Technological and market changes are impacting the coverholder model and against this context Lloyd’s is currently undertaking its most significant overhaul of its delegated authority oversight framework for over 15 years. The changes which Lloyd’s have announced are intended to make Lloyd’s approach more risk-based and flexible, while making it easier and cheaper to do business at Lloyd’s. As Lloyd’s Head of Policyholder & Third Party Oversight, Paul Brady is responsible for leading this programme and he will be speaking to BILA about the work his team are undertaking and what it means for those who participate in the market or act as advisers to it.

Bill Batchelor

BILA is pleased to welcome back Bill Batchelor, a partner of Skadden Arps, to bring us up-to-date on the work of the competition team of the UK Financial Conduct Authority. This will include an examination of the FCA’s findings, published in February this year, from their market study which commenced in 2017. Bill will look at questions left unanswered by the FCA, compliance pointers and lessons for the insurance sector.  Bill will also expand his talk to look at other hot antitrust topics for the industry including the FCA’s first eye-opening competition law fine for information exchange, demonstrating the slippery slope from market intelligence to cartel conduct, as well as antitrust compliance for facilities, big data and Insurtech.

Edward W. (Bill) Batchelor has 20 years of EU and U.K. competition law experience and focuses his practice on conduct investigations, including abuse of dominance, cartels and vertical agreements.

David Pollard is a barrister practising from Wilberforce Chambers in Lincoln’s Inn in London. Until 2017, he practised as a solicitor and was (for 25 years) a partner in Freshfields, practising mainly pensions, employment and insolvency law. David practiced with Freshfields for three years in Singapore in the 1980s.
David was chair of the Association of Pension Lawyers (APL) from 2001 to 2003. David is an editor of the journal ‘Trust Law International’.
David’s books include:
• The Law of Pension Trusts (Oxford University Press, 2013);
• Corporate Insolvency: Pension Rights and Corporate Insolvency: Employment Rights (6th eds, December 2016, Bloomsbury Professional);
• Employment Law and Pensions (Bloomsbury Professional, 2016);
• Freshfields on Corporate Pensions Law (editor) – annual editions from 2012 to 2015 (Bloomsbury Professional).

In this BILA lunchtime lecture, James Davey will consider the reliability of statistics on insurance fraud, and the effect that this has on lawmakers and policymakers.

In this BILA lunchtime lecture, Nik Yeo and Tamara Oppenheimer will discuss the Law of Privilege – developments relevant to in-house lawyers: one step forward, two steps back

In this BILA lunchtime lecture, Tom Ogden and David Turner, Will discuss the advent and expansion of BIM, where proprietary programs drive the design of the project, and Modular Construction, with whole-room components supplied ‘off the shelf’, what now does the professional building designer actually design? What does ‘design responsibility’ mean for the professional designer, the design & build contractor, and their insurers? A look at problems and issues that may arise in this brave new world of automated design and supply.

In this BILA Lecture, Jonathan Post will talk about the Regulatory Challenges of International Insurance Programs post-Brexit, discussing the nature of current market access and conduct challenges, how the UK might learn from Swiss insurers’ experiences of (re)insuring EEA exposures without Freedom of Services, and how a 19th century dissenting lower court judge might have shown us a way forward (creating new product opportunities to boot).

In this BILA Lecture, Peter Macdonald Eggers QC will discuss Testing the Boundaries of the Third Parties (Rights against Insurers) Act

The presentation will consider the major issues which have arisen under the 1930 Act and still arise under the 2010 Act, in light of recent decisions, including Cultural Foundation v Beazley (2018).