UK auto parts maker T&N Plc's $1.68 billion asbestos liability plan includes $840 million worth of insurance from a trio of big reinsurers, among them a subsidiary of Centre Reinsurance Holdings Ltd. Bermuda-based Centre Re Holdings, a unit of the Zurich Group, is parent of Bermuda, New York, San Francisco and Dublin underwriting offices as well as London and Zurich representative offices.

Other insurers involved in the T&N plan are European International Reinsurance Co., a unit of Swiss Reinsurance Co. of Zurich and Munich Reinsurance Co., part of Muenchener Rueckversicherungs-Gesellschaft AG.

The company will pay a single premium of $154 million in January, charging it to results for 1996, Bloomberg business news service said. T&N, formerly the UK's biggest asbestos maker, also said yesterday it will take a $626 million charge for asbestos-related liability.

In Germany, one of the reinsurance firms said using insurance as a solution to asbestos liabilities is unusual. Others take big charges or build corporate firewalls to insulate against damages. Ohio-based Owens Corning, for example, took a massive charge in 1991 to account for its future liabilities from the fibre that has been linked to several forms of lung cancer.

"You can certainly not see a trend in this. This is not an every day occurrence,'' Christian Jacobi, a Munich Re spokesman, said. He declined to discuss how the reinsurance companies would split the liabilities.

T&N, which divested its last asbestos business in March, has spent more than $588 million on claims during the past few years and expects more.

The $1.68 billion package covers the present value of T&N's estimated asbestos liabilities by three times and assumes T&N and 17 other asbestos makers will lose a $1.3 billion US asbestos case, known as the Georgine case, now on appeal to the US Supreme Court. The court is expected to rule by mid-1997.

Of T&N's $626 million charge, $50 million relates to that case. The rest of the charge T&N will take this year relates to the estimated present value of future claims.

The $1.68 billion plan is T&N's latest attempt to assure investors it can weather claims costs. Shares rose 32 pence to 176.5p in midday London trading.

"The proposals are intended to bring to an end the uncertainty surrounding the asbestos issue that has overshadowed the group for so many years,'' T&N Chairman Sir Colin Hope said in a statement.

"We can now get on with the job of building the UK's leading automotive and industrial engineering Group.'' The insurance settlement was made possible by a wealth of data on the extent of likely asbestos liabilities in years ahead, he said, adding that there's much more information on the subject now than a few years ago.

Earlier this month, the UK released formal estimates suggesting deaths from asbestos-related lung cancer could soar 70 percent in the next ten years to as many as 2,100 a year.