Re Sompo Japan Insurance Inc [2011] EWHC 260 (Ch), [2011] All ER (D) 185 (Feb)
In considering whether to exercise its discretion by sanctioning an insurance business transfer scheme, ultimately what the court was concerned with was whether the scheme was fair as between different classes of affected persons, and in arriving at a conclusion as to whether or not it was, among the most important material before the court was material which the Act required to be before it, namely the report of an independent actuary as to his opinion on the scheme.
Further, the court had recognised that a reduction in the security level of transferred policies was not automatically and in every case unfair to the transferring policyholders, either viewed separately, or in the context of the realisation of some commercial objective of the proponents. The strict regulation of the conduct of insurance business in the UK, supervised by the FSA, required specified levels of security to be maintained by insurers but, provided that those levels were not adversely impacted, an insurer was in principle at liberty (subject to any other constraints imposed by company law)
