ABSTRACT
Knowledge under the Insurance Act focuses on the knowledge of the individual broker, so unless the individual broker disseminates the potentially confidential information within his firm, a replacement broker will not be fixed with knowledge of that information. Confidential information received by the individual broker is not protected from disclosure if it is received from a person who is 'connected with' the contract of insurance that the broker is seeking to procure. Under the Insurance Act, imputation of knowledge to the insured by reference to what the insured ought in the ordinary course of business to know, is entirely replaced by the concept of information that should reasonably have been revealed by a 'reasonable search' of a potentially broad range of sources. The imputation of knowledge of confidential information to an insured insofar as such information is held by the insured's agent is covered by sections 4(4) and (5) Insurance Act.
