CH-2025-000032 - [2025] EWHC 2988 (Ch)

The Re-amended Particulars of Claim also assert a cause of action based upon an alleged application, with retrospective effect, of a travel loading to the Plan, in breach of contract (see paragraph 24). However, the contemporaneous evidence shows clearly that the loading was applied for travel related reasons and not for medical reasons.

As regards this, a case of falsely created documents (the underwriting notes) has been asserted, backed up, it is said, by the consistent version of events put forward by Prudential, until about August 2021, that the Plan had been loaded for medical not travel reasons as well as certain Prudential internal notes commenting upon the position. In particular, in correspondence it was suggested that the underwriting notes should be produced, the assertion being that they had not been produced and did not exist. The underwriting notes were subsequently produced in September 2023. I am not aware that any steps have been taken to inspect the originals or check their authenticity (or that access has been refused).

In my judgment, the claim that Prudential imposed a loading with retrospective effect on travel grounds has no real prospect of success. Even Mr Dewji’s case as put in argument before me and based on the documents amounts, at most, to a case that a loading was applied in 2000 but that the reasons given as to why it was imposed have changed, not that a loading was imposed for one reason, then removed, then re-imposed for a new reason.

That in 2000 a loading was applied as a term of the Plan is confirmed by the contemporaneous documentation. It is also separately established by the decision of the Ombudsman, which binds the parties.

Accordingly, I consider that the case that a new loading was applied in 2021 with retrospective effect has no real prospect of success (paragraph 24).