Research On Relevant Issues Of Retrospective Insurance

Marine cargo insurance is the necessary part of international trade system. In recent years, due to furious competition in domestic insurance market and needs of carriage of goods by sea in imports and exports commerce, there are many anti-dated policies in practice, and the anti-dated policy will leads the period of insurance extend beyond the time when the insurance contract was concluded, so retrospective insurance comes into existence. With regard to the effectiveness of retrospective insurance, if the insurer should pay for the loss occurred before the insurance contract was concluded, there are always dispute between insurer and insurant, and they even sue to the court. There are also dispute in the academia and in judicatory practice. For the sake of courts' consistent adjudication scale, the Supreme People's Court of PRC has adopted < Provisions of the Supreme People's Court on Some Issues in the Adjudication of Marine-Insurance-related Cases> on November 13th, 2006, which definitely prescribes the effectiveness of retrospective insurance. There are not provisions of retrospective insurance in our country's laws yet, so some scholars suggest that the relevant provisions of retrospective insurance should be adopted when Maritime Code of the People's Republic of China is amended.Because of the situation mentioned above, I will discuss retrospective insurance and its effectiveness based on the provisions of Marine Insurance Act, 1906 and those of other countries and areas as well as China in this paper. I will also discuss other two issues of law related with retrospective insurance, namely the duty of disclosure by insurant and open cover, and the relationship between them. In the end, I put forward suggestions on how to amend the relevant provisions of Maritime Code of the People's Republic of China.This paper is mostly composed of four chapters:Chapter one is about the summarization of retrospective insurance. I will discuss the origin of retrospective insurance in this chapter. The chapter includes issues of marine insurance contract, period of insurance, anti-dated policy and the definition of retrospective insurance.Chapter two is the main part of this paper, which is about the effectiveness of retrospective insurance. In this chapter, I firstly discuss the insurable interest in marine insurance, and then I discuss respectively the effectiveness of retrospective insurance under English law and Chinese law.Chapter three and Chapter four discuss respectively two issues of law related with retrospective insurance, namely the duty of disclosure by insurant and open cover, and the relationship between them.In the last part of this paper, I suggest that the relevant provisions of retrospective insurance should be adopted when Maritime Code of the People's Republic of China is amended, and the relevant provisions of open cover should be perfected in order to be adapted in marine cargo insurance and international trade in our country.