IPTM3570 - Calculating gains: part surrenders and part assignments: ‘periodic calculations’ and ‘excess events’: special cases

If the calculation at IPTM3560 shows that a gain has arisen at the end of the ‘insurance year’, it will be treated as arising on a chargeable event, an ‘excess event’, occurring at the end of that year unless:

• the policy is a qualifying one, which has the effect of restricting the circumstances in which chargeable events are treated as occurring, see IPTM3310, or
• the transaction-based rule applies, as the conditions explained at IPTM3500 are fulfilled, in which case the rule must be applied to see whether ‘part surrender or assignment events’ have arisen, see IPTM3580 to IPTM3595, or
• the insurance year is the final insurance year, as defined at IPTM3505. Although an ‘excess event’ cannot occur in the ‘final insurance year’, ‘part surrender or assignment events’ can if the transaction-based rule applies, see IPTM3590.

In many cases there will have been no part or whole assignments of the policy during the insurance year and then it is only necessary to see if ‘excess events’ have arisen following part surrenders of the policy.

The requirement for insurers to provide chargeable event certificates to policyholders greatly simplifies the calculation procedure in most cases. Details of any ‘excess event’ and the amount of gain should already have been calculated and reported by the insurer to the policyholder and possibly also to HMRC. This is unless the policy is from an overseas insurer and was taken out before 6 April 2000, when there is no requirement for the insurer to report an ‘excess event’ – see IPTM3210.