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Two Lloyd’s of London managing agencies have been ordered to pay their share of a reinsurance claim after a federal court confirmed an arbitration award against them in a dispute over coverage for an investment fund manager’s financial restatement.
The reinsurers, Hamilton Managing Agency and Antares Managing Agency, held a combined $10 million share of a $35 million reinsurance layer and had refused to pay after ICI Mutual Insurance Co., a risk retention group, paid out the full $100 million limit of its underlying directors and officers and errors and omissions policy.
In Hamilton Managing Agency Ltd. and Antares Managing Agency Ltd. v. ICI Mutual Insurance Co.RRG, decided Tuesday, Chief Judge Christina Reiss of the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont denied the reinsurers’ petition to vacate the arbitration award and confirmed it in full.
The underlying claim arose after an unnamed investment adviser that ICI Mutual covered from 2019 to 2020 acquired sponsorship of master limited partnership funds and determined it needed to restate financial statements filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of the Chief Accountant.
After an 18-month investigation involving outside law firms and accountants, ICI Mutual concluded it owed the full policy limit under the policy’s costs of correction coverage and asked Hamilton and Antares to pay their proportionate reinsurance shares. The reinsurers refused, arguing that the wrongful acts involved occurred prior to the policy period.
The arbitrator ruled for ICI Mutual and the reinsurers then went to federal court, seeking to vacate the award.
Judge Reiss rejected the reinsurers’ claim of arbitrator bias, noting that they had waived their objection by failing to formally seek the arbitrator’s withdrawal. She upheld the arbitrator’s decision to chart a middle course between full deference to ICI Mutual’s coverage determination and a full review. She cited the arbitrator’s reasoning that allowing reinsurers to relitigate every ceded claim from scratch “would have the effect of bringing the reinsurance business to a grinding halt.”
The underlying claim involved alleged miscalculations of the net asset value of the master limited partnership funds. The policy required insurers to compensate investors for the incorrect valuations.
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