Outsourcing in the insurance sector: evolution of Luxembourg's legal framework

What happened?

On 19 March 2024, the Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies adopted bill of law 8184 transposing Directive 2021/2118 into national law related to motor vehicle liability insurance¹ (the “Bill of Law”).

Among adjustments coping with the significant growth in the insurance, reinsurance, and intermediation sector, the main purpose of this Bill of Law is to providing clarifications on certain aspects of the legislative framework for mandatory motor vehicle liability insurance and creating the Automobile Insurance Insolvency Fund (FIAA) which aims to ensure that victims of road accidents receive a proper compensation even if their insurer becomes insolvent.

Additionally, the Bill of Law provides important developments relating to the outsourcing of records keeping to critical third-party ICT service providers and to requests sent by insurance companies to policyholders regarding outsourcing.

Key takeaways

The Luxembourg legislator took the opportunity of the Bill of Law to tackle longstanding difficulties surrounding professional secrecy and the use of subcontracting by insurance companies.

It introduces two major changes in relation to outsourcing:

• Outsourcing of records keeping: while Luxembourg insurance and reinsurance undertakings are in principle required to ensure that their accounts ledgers and other documents relating to their business activities are held in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg at all times, the Bill of Law allows the outsourcing of the storage and processing of documents and related data to critical third-party ICT service providers located in Luxembourg or another EU country and subject to the supervision of a European supervisory authority, without professional secrecy being an obstacle. by allowing the.
• Subcontracting in general: the bill of Law provides a procedure relating to requests from insurers to lift the obligation of professional secrecy in the context of outsourcing in accordance with Art. 300 (2a) second paragraph of the Law of 7 December 2015 on the insurance sector, according to which the silence of a policyholders of certain life insurance contracts is deemed to signify acceptance of the request.

What’s next?

The adoption of Bill of Law 8184 is a pivotal development for the insurance sector in Luxembourg. It will apply 3 days after its publication on the Official Gazette.