Legal Department
Julia S. Ulstrup, Senior Vice President and General Counsel
The four in-house attorneys in ICI Mutual’s legal department bring more than 70 years of combined investment management and insurance-related legal experience to our work for the Company and its insureds. Among the department’s chief responsibilities is claims handling, where we seek to ensure that all insurance claims submitted by our clients are approached in an even-handed, rational, and prompt fashion — an approach that is mandated both by the Company’s mission and by its position as the dedicated insurer owned by and operated for the mutual fund industry.
From the initial receipt of a claim notice to the claim’s final resolution, we view claims handling to be a collaborative, rather than an adversarial, process between ICI Mutual and its insureds. In all claims, big and small, we work to develop and foster open lines of communication with appropriate representatives of insureds (and with their counsel), and we encourage them to engage with us in ongoing discussions, both with regard to the litigation or regulatory matters underlying their claims, and any associated insurance coverage issues. ICI Mutual’s 25 years of fund industry claims experience — during which time we have incurred more than $880 million in claims — evidences that this close attention to pending claims benefits both insureds and the Company, by reducing the potential for misunderstandings or surprises to interfere with the claims handling process, and by assisting the Company and its insureds to achieve claims resolutions that can be viewed as timely and fair by all concerned. Indeed, we are particularly proud of the fact that most insureds continue to remain with ICI Mutual long after their insurance claims are resolved, which we believe to be a convincing test of good claims handling.
Outside the claims handling context, the work of the legal department is probably most visible to insureds through the publications that we author for the Company. These include (1) our annual Claims Trends, which provides a general overview of the fund industry’s claims and litigation environment; (2) our on-line Litigation Notebook, which tracks specific developments in a broad selection of lawsuits and public regulatory proceedings involving funds, fund directors and officers, and fund advisers; (3) our guide on What to Expect in the Claims Process, which describes the steps involved in making and resolving insurance claims; and (4) our risk management studies, which provide in-depth research and analysis on such topics as prospectus liability, D&O/E&O liability insurance, and private advisory risks. These publications — together with our regular speaking engagements to individual fund boards and advisers, and at industry conferences and gatherings — provide us with a forum to share insights on fund industry claims and risks, derived from the Company’s unique position as the industry’s dedicated insurer.