April 2014 Issue No. 211
New Governing Committee The Annual General Meeting held today approved the formation of a new Governing Committee for 2014/2015 as follows:
Chairman
Mr Jimmy Poon
Deputy Chairman
Members
Mr Mike Lee
Mr David Alexander Mr P L Chan Ms Agnes Choi Mr Stuart Fraser Mr Ronnie Ng Mr Andy Robinson Mr Lennard Yong Mr Allan Yu
Insurance Industry's Consultation Session on Political Reform At the captioned session jointly organised by the HKFI and Legislative Councillor K P Chan on 14 April 2014, Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Mr Raymond Tam and Under Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury Mr James Lau briefed us on the methods for selecting the CE in 2017 and for forming the Legco in 2016.
On behalf of the HKFI, I reaffirmed our support in principle of maintaining the Functional Constituencies and presented a proposal on expanding the electorate base by: (i) replacing the existing “corporate votes” by “directors’/senior executives’ votes"; and (ii) extending votes to insurance organisations recognised/approved by the SAR Government. For details of our proposal, please visit our website at: http://www.hkfi.org.hk/pdf/lv032_14.pdf
Establishment of the Independent Insurance Authority (IIA) The Insurance Companies (Amendment) Bill 2014 was gazetted. While we are pleased to note that the Administration has taken into the account some of our comments, there still remain some issues of grave concern. Specifically, we wrote two separate letters to the FSTB registering our concerns on "the principle of acting in the best interest of policyholders" and "formation of the disciplinary committee", and in our third letter to Professor K C Chan, we recapped all the outstanding issues which required to be addressed carefully. The objective is to ensure the smooth launching and effective operation of the IIA. As a next step, we will commission a counsel soon to help review the Bill clause by clause and we are in the process of organizing an interactive forum with the Hong Kong Insurance Law Association (HILA) to examine those outstanding issues and provide constructive input to the Bills Committee. On this we will keep you apprised of progress in the months ahead.
Arbitration - Reinsurance/Insurance-Alternative Disputes Resolution Another event we are co-organising with the HILA in May 2014 is the induction course on the captioned. Seasoned arbitrators and insurance practitioner will provide an overview of how arbitration works in the context of insurance and share their first hand experience in employing arbitration in claims handling. This will be followed by an in-depth session to be conducted by renowned academia Professor Robert Merkin in June. Don't miss this rare opportunity of getting more insight about arbitration! (Circular Ref: Mv046/14)