The Legal Definition Of Insurance Consumers And Protection Of Their Rights

As the rapid development of the insurance and evolution of consumer demand, the insurance has become a part of residents’daily consumption. Compared with traditional tangible goods, the insurance products and service are highly professional and technical, render consumers to be difficult to understand exactly their content, and thereby to find themselves in a disadvantageous position. Against this background, the insurant, insured and beneficiary in the traditional insurance law have transformed into ordinary consumers. Nevertheless, the current practices of law in China about treatment of disputes are still accustomed to be based on the identity of insurant and applicable to the related regulations of Insurance Law. There are very few cases judged by consumers’rights. Although the current Insurance Law in China is be improving day by day after several revisions, the original identity of the insurant, insured and beneficiary is still consumer. Consequently, it is worth to return to the consumer identity of insurance consumers and construct the corresponding system for protection of consumers’rights, so that provide systematic and effective protection to consumers.Apart from introduction and conclusion, the subject of this thesis is divided into five parts, in the following orders----the origins of conception of insurance consumers, the legal definition of insurance consumers, the theoretic basis of the protection of insurance consumers’rights, the current situation and analysis of insurance consumers’rights, the system construction of the protection of insurance consumers’rights.The first part introduces the origin of the definition of insurance consumer. Human beings have developed from existing type of consumption-just meeting the basic needs of life, food, clothing, shelter and means of traveling to developing type of consumption-pursuing higher quality of life, from commercial trade of tangible goods to financial transaction of intangible goods. The appearance of financial instrument, represented by insurance industry has changed human beings’previous concept of goods; financial consumption has rapidly come into common people’s daily life, emerging at the right moment the definition of insurance consumer, which has broken a new path for protecting the legitimate rights and interests of consumers in the field of insurance.The second part differentiate conceptions about insurance consumers. The legal definition of insurance consumers is outspread from two aspects. Concerning the meaning of the concept of insurance consumers’, as the specificity of insurance consumption and the asymmetry of insurance transaction’s information are ubiquitous, are called insurance consumers all members of the society who need to buy insurance products and accept insurance service for the sake of the insurance cover, regardless of the subject of consumption which is nature person or organization. In terms of the extension of insurance consumers, as the final consumer and user of the insurance products, the insured and beneficiary become also insurance consumers with the insurant and are protected by Law on the protection of consumers’rights and interests.The third part explain the theoretical basis of the protection of consumers’rights and interests, i.e. the theory of consumers’sovereignty, the theory of the asymmetry of information and the theory of public interests.The forth part makes an analysis concerning current situation of the legitimate rights and interests of consumers. The most important rights of insurance consumers in our country serve as the right of free choice, the right to know, the right of fair trading. To be specific, Incontestability Provision and the regulation of waiving and estoppels which were added in the updated Law of Insurance are considered as an improvement of consumers’right of free choice. The right to know of insurance consumers embody a concentrated reflection of the insurer’s duty of explanation. Furthermore, the application of the contra preference rule and the invalid exculpatory clause to regulating the standard clauses of insurance contract constitutes an obstacle to realizing the right of insurance consumers’fair deal.The fifth part put forward the path and method to construct the system of the protection of consumers’rights and interest. We recommend to use the legislative path for the making of Law on the protection of financial consumers to construct the system of the protection of insurance consumers in our country. Besides, in order to enhance the protection for insurance consumers, it is appropriate to introduce the adequacy principle, the institution of cooling-off period, the reasonable expectation principle and so forth.