Zurich Financial Services says it will pay up to $455 million (SFr438 million) to settle a class action suit over management fees in the United States.
The insurance company, based in Switzerland’s largest city, said the money would go to a total of up to 13 million policy holders, plus another $90 million in attorneys’ fees.
In a statement on Thursday, the company said that while the allocation plan for payments to class members had not yet been determined, and while actual individual payments might vary considerably, this averages to an estimated $35 per class member or policyholder subscriber.
It added that the settlement and related costs would be fully funded internally, and would neither impact the strength of the Zurich balance sheet, nor its dividend policy.
The proposed settlement would resolve all claims dating back to 1999 in a complaint originally filed in August 2003.
In the lawsuit, there was a challenge against management services fees paid by Farmers Exchanges to Zurich’s subsidiary Farmers Group and some of its affiliates.
The Farmers Group manages the third largest personal lines insurance company in the United States. Along with its subsidiaries, it is wholly owned by the Zurich Financial Services Group.
All rights reserved. The content of the website by swissinfo.ch is copyrighted. It is intended for private use only. Any other use of the website content beyond the use stipulated above, particularly the distribution, modification, transmission, storage and copying requires prior written consent of swissinfo.ch. Should you be interested in any such use of the website content, please contact us via contact@swissinfo.ch.
As regards the use for private purposes, it is only permitted to use a hyperlink to specific content, and to place it on your own website or a website of third parties. The swissinfo.ch website content may only be embedded in an ad-free environment without any modifications. Specifically applying to all software, folders, data and their content provided for download by the swissinfo.ch website, a basic, non-exclusive and non-transferable license is granted that is restricted to the one-time downloading and saving of said data on private devices. All other rights remain the property of swissinfo.ch. In particular, any sale or commercial use of these data is prohibited.