The Concept Of Life Insurance Policy Owner Of Property Rights And In The Life Insurance Policy

Since the Insurance Law of People's Republic China took into effect on October 1, 1995, it has been directing the healthy development of China's insurance industry. Especially after China's entry into WTO, the insurance law needs to obey the principles of the organization. By discussing the concept of "policyowner" and comparing the provisions of western insurance laws and the prevailing insurance practices with those of China's, the paper aims at illustrating some basic insurance principles, indicating a few problems in China's insurance law and giving some ways of analyzing and solving insurance issues.At the beginning, we point out that insurance contract is a property and an applicant naturally becomes a policyowner who is entitled with the ownership rights. The second chapter illustrates the ownership rights of a policyowner of permanent life insurance, among which naming and changing beneficiaries, owning the cash value of the policy and making assignment are the most important ones. Because of the space limitation, we don't discuss about the obligations of a policyowner. However, the obligations are indispensable part of ownership. In addition, parties other than the policyowner can also have interests in the policy. The third chapter explains the relativity and separability of the policyowner's ownership. The fourth chapter focuses on the comparative analysis of regulations and practices of western insurance industry and that of China's. The suggestion is to add provisions on a policyowner in China's insurance law.