BELGIUM Law and Practice Contributed by: Hugo Keulers, Sandra Lodewijckx, Tine Meurs and Thomas Verheyen, Lydian
ised the MGA or the agent to make such statements about coverage after a loss. 4.9 Financial Lines Coverage Trends Policyholders and insureds in financial lines insurance policies are becoming increasingly creative in finding ways to make insurers contribute in convictions or settlements, even if they had not notified losses before to their insurers. One of the factors contributing to this trend is the high evidentiary threshold for insurers faced with a claim that was notified late. In such case, insurers must either demonstrate fraud by the insured or a financial loss resulting from such late notification, which in practice can pose serious difficulties. In addition, since 2025, Belgian law has a new legisla- tive framework for non-contractual liability, which has made it easier to claim both from the company and its directors and officers. 4.10 Casualty Coverage Trends A key trend in casualty coverage disputes is the increase in international disputes regarding interna- tional insurance programs, where it appears that juris- diction or arbitration clauses are not aligned amongst the various linked contracts and/or the contracts with the broker. This leads to an increased need for insur- ers to instruct foreign legal counsel alongside local (coverage or monitoring) legal counsel; this increases the cost of litigation for insurers. 5. Claims Against Insureds 5.1 Key Exposure Areas for Insureds Claims against entities whose liability is insured vary widely and depend on their activities. Under Belgian law, liability insurers are obliged to pay for the defence costs of their insured even above the insured sum, which includes lawyers’ and experts’ fees, as well as also judicial costs. This is related to the duty of the liability insurer to take the lead in the defence of the claim brought against the insured. Moreover, insurers have a legal right of recourse against third parties that are liable for an insured loss or towards their own insured. Insurers can exercise
such a claim either in the name of the insured or in their own name, inter alia, depending on the date of payment of the indemnity by the insurer. In property subrogation claims, property insurers often pay the lawyers’ and experts’ fees, even if deductibles (and, as such, the part of the loss that befalls the insured), are rather high. In general, litigation funding is not very common or popular in Belgium, mainly because the cost of Bel- gian litigation compared to other major jurisdictions (especially the USA and the UK) is relatively modest. 5.2 Shifting Risk Landscape Insurers are increasingly investing in AI-powered claims handling, including tools to detect insurance fraud. This is mostly visible at the level of smaller claims. The first cases of professional liability related to AI- related wrongful advice are appearing, but it is too soon to draw any general conclusions in this matter. 5.3 Defence Costs and Litigation Complexity Litigation funding is not very common in Belgium, and although some litigation funding products and offerors appear to have become more active, they do not yet seem to have found their way into insurance cover- age disputes. That aside, the court rules on reimbursement of lawyers’ fees in large commercial disputes are not expected to change significantly in the next few years. In Belgium, losing parties do not have to reimburse the winning party for its full defence costs and attorneys’ fees, except in arbitration, where this is left to the parties’ agreement or, in the absence thereof, to the decision of the arbitrators. In state court litigation, the winning party may only recover a maximum amount of EUR47,093,02 for claims with a value higher than EUR1 million. In most cases, this amount is not suf- ficient to cover the winning party’s full legal fees and expenses. 5.4 Cost Risk Management and Funding Solutions Protection against costs risk insurance products, which are meant to protect insureds against awards
29 I NSURANCE L I T IGATI O N 2026
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