Life - Articles - Aviva's French subsidiary fail to acknowledge Cours Connu

 For months, Max-Hervé George has been asking Aviva how many of these Cours Connu contracts are still in existence. Aviva says it knows the number of outstanding contracts but refuses to publish what it is or the size of the financial threat other than to claim it is ‘fully provisioned’.
 
 This is despite commentators in France saying the total cost to Aviva could run into hundreds of millions and more for the Cours Connu contracts for the George family alone.
 
 In its full results to the end of 2014, published this week on Infogreffe, the official web-site of France’s Tribunal de Commerce, Aviva Vie has actually reduced the provision for litigation from €24.1m in 2012 to €17m in 2013 down to €15m in 2014. Worse, the Aviva report has removed all mention of Cours Connus contracts.
 
 Yet, in September 2014 Max-Hervé George and his family won a Cours de Cassation, France’s Supreme Court, ruling that going forward his Cours Connu contract must be honoured by Aviva. Earlier, the Tribunal de Grand Instance, France’s High Court, had ruled that for 1997-2007 alone the family be awarded over €9m, half of which was required to be paid immediately.
 
 The Aviva Vie accounts have failed to acknowledge any of these court judgments against the company.
 
 A spokesman for Mr George said: “Many in France have been waiting to see if the Aviva Vie results were going to throw any light on the company’s own view of the size of its problems. If the Provisions pour litiges does relate to the Cours Connu problem it is difficult to see how they can be reduced after the company suffered seriouslegal setbacks in 2014 and into 2015.
 
 “And if the provisions for Cours Connu are not held under Provisions pour litiges, where are they in the accounts and how big are the provisions?
 
 “The cumulative impact of over fifty court decisions in France, the company’s evasiveness and failure to be transparent about Cours Connu is all contributing to undermining the company’s credibility in France.”