NN Group: Court of Appeal Rules Against NN in Interim Judgment; Uncertainty Raised to High

With regard to the unit-linked insurance products sold by Nationale Nederlanden NN, The Court of Appeal in The Hague has concluded that there was no contractual basis for the amount of costs to be deducted from the returns delivered to these policyholders and that NN should have provided more information about returns and deductions to policyholders.

This ruling goes against prior judgments made by the European Court of Justice in April 2015 as well as the preliminary judgment of the Dutch Supreme Court in February 2022. As NN is taking the stance that this interim judgment misinterprets the law and will file a cassation to the Dutch Supreme Court, this ruling gets us no closer to resolving the unit-linked file. As a result, we raise our Uncertainty Rating to High. We maintain our no-moat rating and our fair value estimate.