Study On The First Beneficiary Articles In Shipping Insurance Contract

Since the commercial insurance industry started late in our country, many issues were hidden without arising as Insurance Law and Maritime Law were legalized. However, with continuous social development and ever-strengthening insurance market, there have been more and more insurance-related dispute cases regarding ship and other properties across our country, new types of cases have also emerged endlessly, and hot, difficult and doubtful points have arisen vastly. For example, the articles of first beneficiary stipulated in shipping insurance contract have just emerged in reality. However, neither in the current Insurance Law nor the Maritime Law is there any provision regarding the issue of first beneficiary, leading to a typically occurring case that the result of verdict in the very same scenario differs from district to district because the judicial adjudicative organs in our country have resorted to adjudication in variant scales without explicit legal provisions when dealing with problems related to rights and status of first beneficiary in shipping insurance contract. This is neither beneficial for maintaining the authoritativeness of laws nor for protecting the insurance beneficiary’s legal rights.First, the insurance contract is of certain specificity in terms of its characteristic and subject, as compared with general counterparts. Regarding the concept of first beneficiary in insurance contract, our country has different stipulations than other countries and regions. At present, the stipulations in our country regarding first beneficiary are merely manifested in personal insurance, without stipulations on property insurance and other insurances.Next, the emergence of beneficiary in insurance contract of ship and other properties is an outgrowth of socioeconomic development. Yet the absence of stipulation on this regard from our country’s legislation has resulted in the fact that there is different recognition into validity identification of beneficiary articles in judicial adjudicative practices.Further, despite variant opinions held across all social communities toward whether beneficiary should be included in insurance contracts of ship and other properties, it is certain that there are more and more adherents and proponents. With shipping insurance contract as an entry point, this paper analyzes quality and validity identification of specified beneficiary articles in insurance contracts of ship and other properties, rights the beneficiary ought to enjoy and its status in the contract, raising the idea that it is feasible to enhance legislation and perfect the provisions concerning first beneficiary in insurance contracts of ship and other properties.Finally, the conception is raised to perfect the legislative stipulations of beneficiary in domestic shipping insurance contracts and even property insurance contracts, enhance relevant provisions on Contract Law, Insurance Law and Maritime Law, highlight the beneficiary that ought to be stipulated in ship(property) insurance contracts, and highlight the rights the beneficiary ought to enjoy, the scope and ways of its generation including specification and alteration.