Clifford Chance
VAT treatment of outsourced claims handling services
22 July 2016
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has recently ruled in the case of Aspiro (C-40/15) that insurance claims handling services outsourced to third party service providers do not fall within the insurance VAT exemption.
The ECJ held that the services could only benefit from the insurance exemption if they constituted "related services performed by insurance brokers and insurance agents". Although the services were found to qualify as "related services" for these purposes due to their connection with the insurance transaction, the ECJ ruled that the exemption could only apply if they were services of a type performed by an insurance agent or broker.
