Section 96 RTA

Section 96 of the Road Transport Act 1987 is the provision that requires a motor insurer to satisfy a court judgment for death or bodily injury obtained against its policyholder, once a certificate of insurance was in force.

This duty exists even though the injured claimant was never a party to the insurance contract, which is why an injured person can effectively look to the insurer for payment rather than the driver personally.^[1] It underpins most of a third-party bodily injury claim in Malaysia.

The insurer can only avoid this duty in narrow circumstances set out in the same Act, such as certain cases of non-disclosure by the policyholder.

So in most ordinary road accident cases, the claim is in practice against the insurer. An independent lawyer can take the claim on and deal with that insurer for you.