According to amendments, the personal insurance contract (and these are all the products of insurers in the area of life and health protection, i. e. life insurance, accident insurance, voluntary medical insurance) is recognized as a public agreement, that is, the insurer is obliged to sell such a product and bear risks on it.
“The task of a public contract is to protect the interests of the so-called weak party of the legal relationship, that is, the party that does not have sufficient negotiating capabilities,” the project authors explain.
According to one of the Kommersant's interviewees, “actually, there was no publicity principle anyway, although formally, if the client wanted, he could obtain a policy and protect the risks on it through the court, for example, if he had HIV, which would be a limitation for most insurers. The insurers would have few arguments in their defense in court.”
As Kommersant found out, the reason for removal of the provision on the publicity of insurance contracts from the Civil Code was different.
Recognition of such agreements as public interferes the Bank of Russia's intentions to protect the risks of new investors by dividing them into qualified and non-qualified. It will be impossible to refuse non-qualified investors in selling a complex life insurance product with investment component if the agreement is public.
According to the Central Bank, as of 2020, life insurers collected 430.5 billion rubles of premiums, 182.9 billion rubles of which fell on investment life insurance.
Photos are from open sources.
