SparkeWatch - December 2025 edition
17 December 2025| 
Dino has more than 15 years' experience in professional indemnity, directors' and officers' (D&O), commercial disputes and aviation liability claims.
Jon is an insurance lawyer and litigator with a breadth of experience across complex financial lines matters and reinsurance disputes. Acting for national and international insurers and reinsurers, Jon advises clients on coverage issues and acts for their insureds in all lines of speciality risk including professional indemnity, directors and officers, management liability, warranty and indemnity, and cyber. He advises on the application of reinsurance arrangements and acts in commercial disputes. Jon also has an interest in emerging risks and associated insurance products.
As corporations and financial institutions navigate a changing regulatory and class action landscape, D&O risks continue to evolve. Insurers, faced with a softer market, are following developments closely.
We are pleased to present our annual SparkeWatch report for the period 1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025, which includes empirical data on claims together with our analysis and key legal updates.
Here is a snapshot of what’s inside:
- Our review of class action litigation reveals:
- an uptick in class action filings, although shareholder claims remained low
- more good news for defendants in judicial outcomes (will this cause a further slowdown in new class action filings?), and
- there have been significant developments in how the courts view contingency fees and there are now pronounced differences between jurisdictions.
- The statistics don’t lie, and they show that three of the ten largest class action settlements in Australia occurred in the second half of CY 2024: the Uber class actions; the junior doctors class actions; and the stolen wages class action. However, reporting around higher settlements in class actions is not necessarily an indication of greater risk to insurers in the Australian D&O market. These large settlements relate to types of matters that are likely of lesser concern to most insurers.
- We consider whether D&Os are in a better place, having regard to favourable legislative amendments in the early 2020s, or whether those gains are starting to be pared back. We also look more specifically at the impact on D&Os as a result of recent ATO enforcement activity; the Financial Accountability Regime; and climate change mandatory reporting.
- Regulators continue to shift their focus, with ASIC commencing a range of new enforcement actions including as against an Australian financial services licensee for failing to protect its customers from scams, another breach of utmost good faith proceedings against an insurer having regard to delays in resolving an insurance claim, and a claim against an Australian financial services licensee for failing to adopt adequate cyber security measures.
- Regulators other than ASIC are also shifting their focus, with APRA, OAIC and AUSTRAC all having significant new areas of focus that are likely to result in renewed regulatory scrutiny and, ultimately, enforcement steps in the coming years.
If you have any questions arising from the report or the data contained in it, please do not hesitate to contact Dino or Jon or any other member of the team.
