Research On Notification Obligation Of Increased Risk In Insurance Law

As far as insurance is concerned,its essence is to realize the transfer of risk between the applicant and the insurer.As a kind of continuous contract,if the risk degree of the subject matter of insurance increases significantly during the contract period,the possibility of an insurance accident will dramatically increase,which will break the consideration balance between the two parties of the insurance contract.Therefore,Article 52 of "insurance law" in China has made corresponding provisions,and the insured has an obligation to notify when the risk increases significantly.Compared with Article 37 of "insurance law" before the amendment,the changes of Article 52 of the new "insurance law" are mainly reflected in the following two aspects: The first is to revise "the increase of danger degree" to "the significant increase of danger degree." The second is to clarify the method of returning the premium when the insurer chooses to terminate the contract.On the whole,after this revision,the relevant provisions of "insurance law" on the notification obligation of increased danger have become more perfect.However,no matter the basic theory or from the perspective of legal hermeneutics,there are still some problems that need to be further clarified and discussed.In China’s "insurance law," the part about the obligation of notice of danger increase only stipulates that it is in the part of the property insurance contract,but in this paper,it is considered that there is also a significant increase in the risk of the subject-matter insured in the life insurance contract,and the obligors performing the obligation of notice should include the applicant.In this amendment,it is emphasized that the "significant" provision of increased risk is not clear,which will cause some doubts in judicial practice.In this paper,the so-called "significant" refers to the substantial increase of risk,which can be judged by the three criteria of importance,continuity,and unestimation.In order to better distinguish the subjective and objective state of the obligor,and apply to different legal effects,the subjective and objective risk increase can be distinguished by whether the obligor has intentional orgross negligence for the occurrence of risk increase.And under this classification,we should make corresponding regulations on the period of performance of the obligation,the limitation of the insurer’s option,the judgment of the causality of the occurrence of the insurance accident and the legal effect of performance or violation of the obligation,so as to avoid the generality.If the obligors are required to perform the obligation of notice in all cases of increased risk,the burden of obligors will be excessively increased.Therefore,it is necessary to add the exemption of notice obligation,so as to improve further the legal rules of the alarming increase of notice obligation.