Robert Tomilson

Robert Tomilson has been legal counsel and trusted adviser to the insurance and financial services industry for more than 20 years, both in private practice and as in-house counsel at a Fortune 100 insurance company. Robert has extensive experience in insurance subject matter representing insurers, reinsurers, and intermediaries in litigation and regulatory investigations. These representations have included a London-based finite reinsurance arbitration, a four state regulatory investigation into unlicensed activity, and creating a 50-state MGA platform for a start­up Silicon Valley corporation. 

Robert is an adviser to the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law of Liability Insurance, an adjunct professor of insurance law at Drexel University, and, as a Ph.D. student, a Fulbright-DAAD scholar in Regensburg, Germany. Robert regularly publishes and speaks on the industry’s most important issues. 

Select Representations 

• Lead counsel for carrier in arbitration against four excess and a catastrophe layer of liability reinsurance involving more than $100m mass tort claims
• Represented health care carrier in $40m medical stop arbitration with Plan sponsor, included allegations of improper calculation of Plan premium and ex gratia payments to beneficiaries
• Lead counsel for an MGA in a four state Insurance Department investigation regarding unlicensed activity and excessive fees
• Lead counsel for an actuarial firm before the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as in SDNY class action, wherein the allegations included the insufficiency of a public company’s loss reserving
• Lead counsel in London-situs arbitration, where testimony and documents produced in U.S., involving the experience account balance of more than $25m for a property catastrophe excess, finite retrocession agreement involving 9-11 risks
• National and coordinating counsel for excess workers comp carrier providing coverage for self-funded employers in all fifty states
• Established a Delaware-domiciled risk purchasing group (an RPG) for a 14,000 member trade association for the purchase of liability insurance on a group basis
• Represented Tokyo-based international insurer in establishing a reinsurance syndicate that allowed it to cede certain carved out risks under general liability policies
• Provided a comprehensive "insurable interest" opinion for a transaction raising $100m wherein life policies were used as collateral for bondholder commitments
• Represented a reinsurer before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on the right of set-off among multiple contracts with an insolvent Pennsylvania insurer
• Represented Barbados-based reinsurer in transaction wherein a $300m dividend was made to North American and parental guarantees provided to cedents

 Publications / Presentations 

• Presenter, “Breaking Down Ancient Walls: Regulatory Hurdles for Silicon Valley Insurtech”, Insurance Licensing Services of America, Podcast 2016.   
• Presenter, “When is an MGA a Systemically Important Financial Institution? Brokers, Producers, MGAs under the Uniform Model Act”, Brokers & Reinsurance Markets Assoc. (BRMA) Philadelphia, May 2015.
• Presenter, Reinsurance Disability and Professional Sports Disability Claims, ACI’s Litigating Disability Insurance Claims Forum, January 2015.
• Presenter, “The Evolution of Reinsurance Clauses from the 1990s to the Present”, C.W.D.G. Contract Wording Discussion Group, New York, October 2014.
• Court Holds Excise Tax Does Not Apply to Foreign Retrocessional Reinsurance, February 2014.
• Whither Grigsby? STOLI and the Assault on Insurable Interest, New Appleman on Insurance, December 2013.
• SDNY Predicts California Would Adopt Bad Faith Exception to Notice-Prejudice Rule, August 2013.
• Chair, ACI’s 2nd National Advanced Forum on Life Insurance and AD&D Litigation, July 2013.
• Duties of the Cedent, New Appleman on Insurance, August 2012.
• Aetna Enters the Capital Markets with the First Medical Benefits ILS Transaction, Insurance Finance & Investment, March 2011.
• Hugging the Shore: Can North American Insurers Compete in the Global Market? Canadian Insurance Business Magazine, December 2009.