Insurance, legacy and complex liability solutions

Claims management expertise

As Scheme Administrators, we are driven by our purpose and strive to do the right thing for Chester Street and its Creditors. Ensuring a continued delivery of high service and retaining the trust we have built up over the last 20 years, providing a market leading service to all Creditors, including the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

Following challenges with the incumbent run-off provider, as a result of COVID, and driven by our ambition to transform the project and increase service delivery standards, we established an in-house claims management service with a ready made expert claims team who now manage the claims activity.

The transition has gone exceptionally well and a Creditors’ Committee member remarked that “The early PwC analysis and subsequent novel strategic approach to bring the claims handling in house was not without risk, but the potential pitfalls have all been addressed and the Committee left in no doubt that this was the correct and least risky approach from the Creditors’ perspective. Accordingly, the PwC team are to be congratulated for their insight, implementation and successful delivery of this difficult project.”

Delivering great outcomes

An overseas corporate identified a £250m portfolio of reserves relating to legacy business in their UK Branch that they decided to exit utilising a reinsurance arrangement, followed by an insurance business transfer.

We worked with their local and head office teams to develop a transaction rationale, which assessed the type of covers available and the different markets which could provide those covers. We examined the economics of completing the transaction, as well as key documentation explaining the transaction requirements, cover requirements, details of the reserves and any inherent risks and opportunities in the transaction.

After receiving multiple quotations we were able to achieve an increase in the security provided by the counterparty and a very significant reduction in the premium against their provision.

Efficient wind-down across multiple countries

Elite Insurance wrote general insurance business, primarily through intermediaries, including motor, general liability, professional indemnity, warranty, legal expenses (including after-the-event), construction defect policies and surety bonds across many markets in Europe.

Elite’s reinsurer entered liquidation and this matter, together with continued reserve deterioration experienced in a number of business lines as well as issues with the collection of some of the assets base, led to the Elite becoming balance sheet insolvent and being placed in Administration.

Elite is a complex, multi jurisdictional insolvency and it is relatively early in the Administration. We are working vigorously to pursue asset and other recoveries, ensuring policyholder claims are dealt with appropriately, and paid by relevant compensation schemes, and reviewing the major books of business to implement strategies that will benefit creditors as a whole.

Complex liabilities solution

The largest UK non-bank lender faced financial uncertainty because of claims against it, as well as operational challenges that took up significant, valuable management time. PwC advised on a Scheme of Arrangement to bring finality to the volume of complaints. The scheme enabled the company to enter a managed wind-down of its business and its customers to obtain a better outcome than the alternative if the business had entered insolvency. This scheme was designed and promoted during the first half of 2021 and was successfully implemented following sanction by the High Court. PwC advised on scheme design, communications, scheme meeting arrangements and voting, provided data analytics and digital support to develop an automated claims assessment tool, developed a claims portal for customers to lodge claims and communicate with the company about the progress of their claims.