Practice Areas & Industries: Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP

Practice/Industry Group Overview

Cadwalader's preeminent insurance and reinsurance team performs the full range of legal work related to the insurance and reinsurance industries, from business transactions to litigation to regulatory compliance. In addition to some of the largest insurance and reinsurance companies, we represent domestic and international entities involved in every aspect of the insurance and reinsurance business, including large industrial and service corporations, pension funds, investment and commercial banks, thrift institutions, and stock and commodity exchanges.

Services Available

Cadwalader attorneys represent major insurance companies and other financial institutions in significant claims and litigation related to commercial and financial insurance. These cases involve director and officer liability, errors and omissions, fidelity, and other forms of special financial risk insurance.

Our litigators also provide counsel to major financial institutions with respect to the policy terms and negotiation of financial services insurance, including advice on reinsurance treaties and related regulatory issues. In addition, Cadwalader conducts internal investigations and prepares policies and procedures for several different insurance company clients.

Cadwalader has long represented leading New York investment banks and broker/dealers in litigation and insurance matters relating to major trading losses caused by rogue brokers or similar misconduct.

Our leading U.K. insurance insolvency experts, together with our New York partners, specialize in cross-border insurance litigation and proceedings. We also represent public companies and their directors and officers in securities class actions and other financial services litigation, and coordinate their defense with insurance carriers as underwriter-approved defense counsel.

With a team of experienced reinsurance attorneys, Cadwalader offers knowledge and expertise that few firms approach. The reinsurance group combines many decades of experience in representing cedents, reinsurers, retrocessionaires, syndicate managers, syndicate members and intermediaries. On behalf of these clients, our attorneys have handled dispute resolutions, including litigation, arbitration and mediation, as well as corporate and commercial transactions, including the purchase and sale of reinsurance entities, the development of reinsurance programs, and negotiation and drafting of reinsurance contracts, commutation agreements, deeds of trust, escrow agreements and security devices. They are also experienced with insurance and reinsurance company insolvencies, counseling reinsurers and liquidators about their rights and obligations.

The Firm's attorneys have handled over 500 reinsurance arbitrations and litigations in more than a dozen states and in London and Bermuda. Among their successes on behalf of reinsurers, they have obtained rescission of reinsurance treaties and facultative certificates before arbitration panels, in United States Federal District Court and against the liquidator of an insolvent insurer in state court.

On behalf of cedents or retrocedents, our attorneys have collected well over one-half billion dollars of reinsurance or retrocession recoverables. They have also been in the forefront of persuading arbitration panels to require security from a reinsurer as a condition of permitting the reinsurer to participate in discovery, and have established law that requires alien reinsurers to post collateral as a condition of defending an action. Our attorneys also have extensive experience successfully representing insurers and reinsurers in disputes with former agents or underwriting managers, including several multi-million dollar disputes involving agency malfeasance and alleged unlawful termination. Our reinsurance practice is also involved in complex disputes regarding cedents' allocation to reinsurers of their environmental and products liabilities.

The Firm's attorneys have counseled clients with respect to loss portfolio transfers, sales of reinsurance books of business, purchases and sales of reinsurance underwriting management companies and the formation and operation of reinsurance auditing and run-off companies. They have represented several reinsurers in run-off and helped design for them programs to commute or otherwise minimize exposure to cedents while protecting retrocession recoverables.