GLOBAL BRIEFS

Twenty insurers and reinsurers last week formed the United Nations Environment Program Insurance Assn. in Zurich, Switzerland, to address industry concerns about the environment. The companies are among the 70 signatories of a 1995 UNEP Insurance Initiative statement of environmental commitment aimed at reducing environmental risk and resulting insurance losses . . . .The Brussels, Belgium-based Bureau International des Producteurs d'Assurances et de Reassurances, an international brokerage association, welcomed the European Commission's decision to draft legislation next spring on the role of the insurance intermediary. BIPAR Director Harald Krauss said he hopes the measure will provide brokers with a "single license or passport" to conduct business throughout the European Union. Brokers currently cannot follow their clients across borders. . . .The Council of Lloyd's of London is considering whether the new Central Fund should pay losses before or after an unlimited liability member's personal wealth is exhausted. Currently, members' funds at Lloyd's are tapped first, then their personal wealth and finally the Central Fund. Under the proposed arrangement, the Central Fund would pay losses after the members' funds at Lloyd's had been tapped, but before their personal wealth was raided. . . .The executors of 3,000 estates of deceased Lloyd's of London members were correct in paying to reinsure the members' liabilities into Equitas Ltd., London High Court Justice Lindsay ruled last week in the Test Case, re: Yorke. The executors now can distribute the rest of the members' estates to their beneficiaries and need do no more to provide for Lloyd's creditors, according to the decision. The Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners sponsored the test case. . . .Hyundai, Korea's largest business conglomerate, has set up a spread fund of an undisclosed amount at Lloyd's through its insurance affiliate, Hyundai Marine & Fire Insurance Co. Ltd. The fund, known as Hyundai U.K. Underwriting Ltd., managed by Murray Lawrence Members Agency, will commence underwriting on various syndicates next year and plans to establish a corporate syndicate at a later date. . . .Standard & Poor's Corp. has assigned its A- claims-paying ability rating to Madrid-based Nacional de Reaseguros S.A., "reflecting the company's leading position in the Spanish reinsurance market, excellent capitalization and satisfactory operating results." However, S&P said the company, one of the largest in Spain, is exposed to "the volatility" of the primary Spanish market because it writes mainly proportional domestic property reinsurance and may have to shift its portfolio in the long term to more sophisticated coverages. Nacional wrote 25.2 billion Spanish pesetas ($175 million) in gross premiums last year.