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.

This is why the phrase your claim is really against the insurer holds true in almost every ordinary Malaysian road accident case.