Countrywide Assured Group plc v Marshall is one of the cases that helped settle how narrowly the courts read an "event" aggregation wording in the context of financial mis-selling. It sits alongside the House of Lords decision in Lloyds TSB v Lloyds Bank and points in the same direction.
The dispute concerned claims arising from the mis-selling of investment and pension products by advisers. The aggregation wording in play allowed claims to be treated as one where they arose out of "any one event". The insured wanted the many individual mis-selling claims to aggregate, so that they would be treated as a single matter for the purposes of the cover.
The court declined to treat a general failure — such as an inadequate compliance or training regime — as a single "event" capable of unifying the separate acts of mis-selling. Consistent with the wider line of authority, an "event" was understood as something happening at a particular time and place, not a continuing background state of affairs. Each sale to each customer was its own event. The systemic failing that made the mis-selling possible was a cause, not an event.
For a firm whose losses come from the same advice model repeated across many clients, the choice of aggregating word determines how many self-insured excesses are payable and how the claims sit against the limit. An "event" wording tends to multiply excesses across separate sales; a wider wording can consolidate them. Neither is automatically better — it depends on the numbers and the limit structure.
Because the case concerns financial mis-selling, it maps directly onto the exposures covered by independent financial advisers' PI insurance. The same reasoning applies to accountants who apply a single mistaken approach across a body of client work. Apex helps professional firms understand which aggregating word governs their cover before a claim tests it.
For advice repeated across a client bank, the aggregating word shapes your exposure. Consider:
Apex Insurance Brokers Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Firm reference number 724952. This entry is general information, not advice on any particular policy.