Tips On Insurance Intermediaries On The US Law Obligations

The research objective of this thesis is whether an insurance intermediary shall beunder an affirmative duty to advise consumers, including insured and beneficiary. Theobjective focuses on not only the scope of the duty but also the applicable standard ofthe duty---the professional duty of care.This thesis can be broken into three parts. The first part of it, after setting forth thedefinition of the intermediary's duty to advise, describes three different categories ofjudicial opinion on whether an insurance intermediary shall be under an affirmativeduty to advise consumers. The first category of judicial opinion imposes very limitedduty or no duty to advise on an insurance intermediary;the second one impose anaffirmative duty to advise on an insurance intermediary;the third one, only underspecial circumstances or special relationship, imposes the duty to advise on aninsurance intermediary.The second part raises three approaches to test whether an insurance intermediaryshall be under a duty to advise, and accordingly, based upon American insuranceindustry's practice, demonstrates that an insurance intermediary shall be under anaffirmative duty to advise consumers in terms of public policy. And then demonstratesthat the applicable standard of duty to advise is the professional standard of care withciting three authorities.The third part applies the duty to advise and the professional standard of care tospecific case, rebuts the opposite arguments and illustrates the advantages of imposingsuch a duty.There are three new ideas presented by this thesis: firstly, with applying threeapproaches to test whether a duty exists on torts, demonstrating that an insuranceintermediary shall be under an affirmative duty to advise consumers in terms of publicpolicy consideration from a new prospective;second, based on American insuranceindustry's practice, rebutting the opposite arguments on this issue by combining theduty to advise and the professional standard of care to build the theoretical foundationof the duty;third, detailing the difference among several duties imposed by commonlaw.