It took five years, 11 interlinked lawsuits and a trial that never got going, but the biggest insurance fight to come out of the Greensill Capital collapse is over.
Insurance Australia Group (IAG) confirmed on Friday that its subsidiary, Insurance Australia Limited (IAL), has agreed to settle the claims brought against it by Credit Suisse entities in the Federal Court of Australia. Those claims had a combined face value of about A$2.8bn (roughly £1.4bn) plus interest. What Credit Suisse, now part of UBS, will actually receive is anyone's guess, because the terms are confidential.
Marsh is in the deal too. The world's largest broker placed Greensill's trade credit cover through its UK arm, Marsh Ltd, and had been Greensill's broker since 2014. The Credit Suisse funds added Marsh Ltd to the Australian proceedings in November 2023. They argued the broker had failed to make sure the insurance representations given to them were accurate. Marsh is understood to be covered by Friday's settlement but has not commented publicly.
The announcement came four days after IAG told the Australian Securities Exchange that a settlement had not been finalised. It was responding to press reports that the parties had shaken hands on the eve of trial. Those reports turned out to be early rather than wrong.
Read next: IAG puts Credit Suisse's £1.5bn Greensill claim to bed – but insurance's reckoning isn't over
IAG said the settlement would not have a material impact on its financial position or its FY27 results, because it expects to recover from insurance, reinsurance and other indemnities. It used almost identical wording in May, when it settled a separate A$4bn claim brought by Greensill Bank AG and its insolvency administrator, Dr Michael C Frege. Neither release puts a figure on what was paid.
Taken together, IAL has now closed two of the three Greensill claims it faced, which between them carried a face value of close to A$7bn. The stakes had been real. Before the trial, Macquarie estimated that IAG's net exposure could reach A$740m in a worst case.
Investors greeted the deal with relief rather than celebration. IAG shares opened on Friday at A$7.95, almost 2% above Thursday's close of A$7.80, then drifted back to finish the day at A$7.84, up 0.5%. That left them below the roughly A$8.01 they reached earlier this month, when the trial was first called off, suggesting much of the good news was already priced in.
Citi analyst Nigel Pittaway said in a note that the settlement was a welcome end to a long-running saga. He added that, provided the insurance, reinsurance and indemnity protections hold as expected, it should lift the Greensill cloud that has hung over IAG's shares for some time.
For Marsh, this is another piece of Greensill litigation cleared away, and an expensive one. In April the broker booked a $425m charge covering estimated liability and legal expenses tied to the case. Chief financial officer Mark McGivney told analysts the figure was the firm's best estimate and had been shaped by a court-sponsored mediation. Marsh has not said whether that provision covers Friday's deal.
The broker has had a bruising few years in the case. In May 2025 it settled White Oak's London High Court claim, after a trial in which senior executives gave evidence. That case exposed awkward internal emails showing Marsh staff alarmed at the state of Greensill's cover.
Last October the broker lost a bid to move its fight with Greensill Bank to the English courts, when a Sydney judge granted a rare anti-anti-suit injunction. By then Marsh had been joined to seven of the eleven Australian proceedings.
Read next: Marsh blocked from UK court action over £3.4 billion claim
Greensill's model depended on insurance. It bought companies' unpaid invoices, bundled them into notes and sold them to investors. Credit Suisse's supply chain finance funds held around $10bn of that paper. Trade credit insurance was the safety net that made the notes sellable.
Much of that cover came from Bond & Credit Co (BCC), a Sydney underwriting agency. IAG co-owned BCC until April 2019, when it sold its stake to Tokio Marine.
Credit Suisse argued IAL was on the hook for policies BCC wrote on its behalf. IAL argued the opposite: the policies were invalid and BCC had no authority to issue them. When the cover wasn't renewed, Greensill collapsed within weeks.
Read next: Tokio Marine addresses speculation regarding Greensill exposure
It isn't quite finished. White Oak's claim against IAL, worth about A$170m (roughly £85m) plus interest, is still live, and IAG says it will keep defending it.
Greensill was headquartered in London, and the fallout here has been political as well as commercial. Former prime minister David Cameron's lobbying on the firm's behalf became a Westminster scandal.
The Treasury Committee's Lessons from Greensill Capital report urged reform of the appointed representatives (AR) regime, which Greensill's UK securities arm had operated under. The FCA tightened its rules on how principal firms oversee their ARs, and those rules came into force in December 2022. In June, founder Lex Greensill accepted a nine-year ban from acting as a UK company director.
Read next: Nearly 200 insurance AR relationships terminated after Greensill-spurred FCA intervention
It matters for a UK trade credit market that is far from niche. According to the Association of British Insurers, UK trade credit insurers were covering about £171bn of business activity in 2020, the year before Greensill fell.
For a London market built heavily on delegated authority, the frustrating part is what the settlement leaves unanswered. The case asked whether a capacity provider is bound when an agency it once part-owned allegedly writes business beyond its authority. A five-month trial was meant to answer that.
Instead the question has been settled away twice, both times behind confidentiality clauses. That leaves no judgment for coverholders, MGAs or their brokers to learn from.
