The Consumer Insurance (Representation and Disclosure) Act 2012 will come into force on 6th April 2013. It removes the duty on consumers to disclose any facts that a prudent underwriter would consider material, and replaces this with a duty to take reasonable care not to make a misrepresentation.
Under the Consumer Insurance Act 2012, this duty will no longer exist, but instead they will be under a duty to take reasonable care not to make a misrepresentation. Consumers will also no longer be expected to have to guess what is “material” to the insurer.
The statute that previously covered disclosure and misrepresentation was the Marine Insurance Act 1906 and this statute, and much of the leading case law, was based on 18th and 19th century principles.