BELGIUM Law and Practice Contributed by: Hugo Keulers, Sandra Lodewijckx, Tine Meurs and Thomas Verheyen, Lydian
requiring them to pay the litigation costs of their adverse parties, are not yet widely known or estab- lished in the Belgian market. It will have to be seen to what extent they may become more popular or in demand in the future, for instance in arbitration. For proceedings before state courts, the need for such insurance is rather limited given the relatively low lump sum indemnities that are awarded to the winning party in a dispute. So-called legal expenses insurance, which will cover plaintiff’s lawyers’ fees, has existed for many years, usually in connection with other insurance products (third-party motor liability insurance, fire insurance, etc) and in consumer markets. 5.5 AI-Driven Claims Volumes and Complaints To date, there is no specific experience in Belgium with this issue, but it is expected that this may now happen in the next few months or years. The Belgian sector federation of insurance companies has recently issued a warning that artificial intelligence is making insurance fraud easier, allowing scammers to fabricate convincing fake photos or invoices, and that it has seen a significant increase in the amount of proven insurance fraud, likely due to AI. 6. Third-Party Claims and Defence Trends 6.1 Third-Party Claims and Direct Actions Under the Belgian Insurance Act, third parties have a direct claim against liability insurers. This applies across lines (motor car liability, product liability, pub- lic liability professional indemnity, D&O liability and environmental liability). However, this does not apply in cases of marine liability insurance or liability insur- ance relating to carriage of goods, except regarding luggage or moving. The direct action of the injured third party against the liability insurer is time-barred five years after the dam- age-causing act or, if a crime has been committed, the crime. However, if the injured party can prove they became aware of their direct action right against the liability insurer on a later date, the statute of limitations will start to run as from that later date.
In general, direct actions against liability insurers are common and well established in Belgium. 6.2 Emerging Liability and Defence Trends Insurers are much more aware of the need for co-ordi- nated legal responses and strategies to address serial and cross-border claims. As a result, they are increas- ingly appointing monitoring legal counsel alongside coverage or defence counsel. 7. Geopolitical Factors 7.1 Geopolitical Drivers of Insurance Disputes There is no statistical information available on the impact of geopolitical developments on the volume and nature of insurance disputes in Belgium. Further- more, because most reinsurance disputes are handled in non-Belgian arbitration or courts, it is impossible to say to what extent there has been an increase in reinsurance litigation with a Belgian element. 7.2 Sanctions and Payment Challenges Sanctions regimes and restrictions on cross-border payments have not had a significant influence on claims handling, coverage positions or dispute out- comes. 7.3 War, Political Risk and Exclusions The Belgian terrorism insurance legal framework has recently been updated to improve clarity and remove hurdles for victims of terrorist attacks to obtain com- pensation. However, except for specific types of insurance mostly relevant to private individuals (inter alia labour accident insurance, motor vehicle liability insurance and property insurance relating to so-called “simple risk” properties, eg, private residences, acci- dent, sickness and life insurance), insurers are allowed to exclude terrorism risk from cover insofar as they do so in clear and specific terms. As a rule, war and civil war are excluded from cover under the Belgian Insurance Act, unless otherwise provided in the insurance contract. The wording of war and civil war exclusion clauses in commercial insurance contracts has evolved in recent years and has become more sophisticated in some cases, especially in the maritime sector. There is however no
30 I NSURANCE L I T IGATI O N 2026
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