N Brown insurance litigation gets more complicated

By

Nigel TAYLOR

Published
Jun 16, 2021

​JD Williams’ claim against Allianz Insurance over Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) damages has hit problems. The insurance company has now pushed back against the N Brown-owned retailer, increasing its original claim by up to £36 million.

The litigation involves an ongoing claim going through the High Court in which Allianz has contested JD Williams’ attempt to counterclaim for PPI pay-outs it made to customers regarding the sale of historical insurance products.

Allianz has argued that JDW was an experienced seller of add-on insurance products and knew the risks.

In a market update Wednesday, parent company N Brown said: “The claim and counterclaim are extremely complex, and proceedings remain at an early stage, with each party only recently having completed a long disclosure exercise. We continue to gather detailed and factual expert and witness evidence in relation to multiple elements of the claim and counterclaim”.

However, N Brown shares plummeted this morning and remain down almost 7%.

Allianz has now issued a further application to the Court seeking to increase the scope of its original claim in relation to a further customer redress exercise yet to be undertaken.

It said it estimates the value of this additional element of the claim, should the application be successful, to be up to £36 million.

The case is scheduled for trial in March 2022.