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| a bill for the reform of the german insurance contracts |
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 a bill for the reform of the german insurance contracts
act ± separation of investment activities and risk
business
by dieter hesberg and walter karten
1. preliminary observations
in 1997 the largest opposition group in the german parliament introduced a bill to
reform the insurance contracts act1 which attracted much public attention and confused
insurance experts considerably. this is understandable. the proposed legal provisions imply a
very peculiar understanding of ``insurance as an economic activity and of the function of
``insurance companies. if implemented these proposals would drastically change the entire
german insurance industry in a way which ± as far as can be ascertained ± is without
historical or international empirical precedent: the compulsory separation of investment
activities and risk business would actually decapitate the insurance business and would cause
it to degenerate into a purely organizational service activity.
it appears to us to be important and interesting to examine the reasoning behind the bill
and its far-reaching consequences from two aspects: ®rstly the bill poses the basic question
``what is insurance? it goes on to answer this question with a fundamentalist dogma of a
purported ``nature of insurance which ± although only subjectively valid ± is used as the
basis for the postulates embodied in the bill and which appears to render these postulates
immune to any criticism based on any other reasoning.
secondly the question is raised as to the economic justi®cation for the proposed new
regulation which would involve severe market constraints. it is from this point of view that
the postulates must ultimately be assessed.we will not in this paper be going into the directly
associated aspects of the legal nature of the insurance contract but will con®ne ourselves to
the strictly economic perspective.
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 نویسنده: | dieter hesberg and walter karten | | مترجم : | | | منبع : | | | تاریخ : | april 1999 |
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