Business Insurance Quotes King on New Liberty Mutual Deal

Business Insurance published an article looking at what could result from Liberty Mutual Insurance Co.'s multibillion-dollar retroactive reinsurance deal with Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s National Indemnity Co. to cover “substantially all” of Liberty Mutual’s “U.S. workers compensation, asbestos and environmental liabilities.” Olshan Partner Jeremy M. King, who was quoted in the article, believes that claimants may have legitimate concerns that this move could result in an increase in time to get claims paid. “What we've seen before is that when Berkshire Hathaway does step in and they're ultimately responsible for some of these longer-tail liabilities, the time to get claims paid does lengthen,” said King. He also noted that claimants may well not see any difference as reports on the deal indicated that Liberty Mutual would retain the claims handling responsibility for workers compensation claims. “I think there might be cause for hope there that ... the same people will be handling the claims as before under the same instructions, but as far as I know, there's no guarantee of that.”