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| The Connecting Structure Between the Right of Rescission and Reinstatement of Personal Insurance |
| Chen Jingshan1, He Tianxiang2 |
1.Civil, Commercial and Economic Law School, China University of Political Science and Law, Beijing 100088, China
2.Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore, 259776, Singapore |
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Abstract Reinstatement of insurance refers to a legal mechanism wherein, upon the policyholder’s failure to timely pay premiums, leading to the suspension of a personal insurance contract, the contract can be reinstated if the policyholder applies for reinstatement within the statutorily defined reinstatement period and pays the outstanding premiums. Originating from the inherent power asymmetry between insurers and policyholders, this mechanism serves to restore contractual equilibrium, ensuring the continuity and stability of the insurance contract while safeguarding the contractual interests of both the insured and beneficiaries. However, as a contract inherently altruistic in nature, personal insurance extends beyond the concerns of the policyholder and the insurer, involving third-party interests during contract performance. Such complexity results in the normative framework modeled on dual contracts tending to overlook the interests of third parties, especially when the insurer and the policyholder exercise their right of rescission. Thus, there is a pressing need for a nuanced institutional design to protect third-party interests in the context of personal insurance reinstatement.In the current Chinese legal landscape, the reinstatement system relies on a foundational structure encompassing a “reinstatement request” and “hazard defense”. However, current insurance law fails to address the question whether third parties, whose interests are intertwined with the contract apart from the policyholder, possess the right to apply for reinstatement and if they can make premium payments on behalf of the policyholder following such an application. Given that third parties lack contractual insight and therefore unable to ascertain specific contract performance details, such a legal structure may result in the loss of opportunities for the third parties to self-remedy their insurance interests. Consequently, the reinstatement system should undergo two structural adjustments to address this issue. Firstly, from both logical and legitimacy perspectives, the reinstatement system should align with the demands of judicial practice. This entails expanding the qualification for reinstatement applications to include the insured or beneficiary while imposing a duty on them to inform the policyholder after applying for reinstatement, thereby compelling the policyholder to rectify premium payments. Secondly, building upon this, the system should permit third parties to make premium payments for a suspended contract through mechanisms including “third-party alternative performance” or “exempt debt assumption”, which help realize the two institutional values of the reinstatement system, namely continuation and mutual benefits.The reinstatement system and the right of rescission should ideally operate independently. However, due to the inherent altruistic nature of personal insurance contracts, an information asymmetry exists between the third parties and the contracting parties. Additionally, the formative nature of the right of rescission implies inadequate reminders for third-party rights. Consequently, third-party interests are at risk in situations involving the statutory right of rescission exercised by the insurer and the discretionary right of rescission exercised by the policyholder. To safeguard third-party interests and bridge the gap between these two systems, a combination of preventive and responsive constructions could be implemented. In terms of specific institutional construction, distinctive modes should be devised for the discretionary right of rescission and the statutory right of rescission. For the former, a notification mode is recommended for the policyholder’s exercise of discretionary rescission. This mandates that the policyholder informs the third parties of the information on the exercise of rescission right before doing so. For the latter, the re-interpellation system could be introduced for the statutory right of rescission. This system requires the insurer to notify the third parties concurrently with reminding the policyholder to pay the premium. It needs to be aligned with the free mode of the right of rescission thereafter.The existing legal scholarship has shown a notable dearth in addressing the safeguarding of third-party interests in the context of insurance reinstatement. Also, a comprehensive exploration of the intricate relationship between the reinstatement and the right of rescission is conspicuously absent from scholarly discourse, creating a discernible theoretical gap. This paper addresses this research vacuum by examining the reinstatement system, the right of rescission, and their articulation as three distinct thematic dimensions. It introduces a typology-based approach to articulate the reinstatement and recession rights system, providing a nuanced understanding of their interplay; while also evaluates the roles of the “re-interpellation system” and the “inquiry into redemption” system within the discussion. The proposed articulation construction, emerging from this inquiry, can better fulfill its dual institutional values of continuity and mutual benefit while ensuring proper protection for third-party interests.
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Received: 12 December 2022
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2023, Vol. 53 
