Tort reform for the United States? It’s not an impossible dream, according to Maurice Greenberg, the long-serving Chairman and CEO of US insurance giant AIG.

Speaking at the International Insurance Society seminar in New York last week, he said tort reform is already taking place.

Sunrise Exchange News reporter Monique Hodgetts says Mr Greenberg told the meeting: “There is a good chance we will get class action legislation at a federal level.”

It’s badly needed. Asbestos claims in the US are again crippling manufacturers, and as reported last week, Mr Greenberg believes the legislation at present before the US Senate is “doomed to die”.

Having increased AIG’s reserves by $2.7 billion in February because of increasing asbestos litigation, Mr Greenberg has been the most outspoken US business leader on the need for tort reform. He said recently that “unlike the abrupt burst of the asset bubble, the liability bubble has yet to contract in our economy”.

“The rampant rise in jury awards and a tort system in urgent need of reform are important aspects of the overall US liability picture. AIG is working hard, as are others, to achieve meaningful tort reform in… Congress.”

But the major talking points at the IIS meeting, which brings together the industry’s global heavyweights, were the future introduction of international accounting standards and US insurers’ opposition to new corporate governance laws.

Mr Greenberg summed up the feeling of many US insurers when he said the accounting standards will introduce volatility into insurers’ results. “Fair value” standards will measure the expected exchange value of an asset or liability, but Mr Greenberg said the US standard – Generally Agreed Accounting Principles – “is the most transparent and the best for the insurance industry”.