Proposition 55K0194

Projet de loi simplifiant les règles de résiliation des contrats d'assurance.

General information ¶

Authors

PS | SP Malik Ben Achour, Ludivine Dedonder, Ahmed Laaouej, Christophe Lacroix, Leslie Leoni, Patrick Prévot, Sophie Thémont, Eliane Tillieux, Philippe Tison
Vooruit Melissa Depraetere

Submission date

July 20, 2019

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

consumer protection termination of a contract insurance insurance contract insurance law

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

Groen CD&V Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP DéFI Open Vld N-VA LDD MR PVDA | PTB VB

Party dissidents ¶

• Jasper Pillen (Open Vld) abstained from voting.

Contact form ¶

Do you have a question or request regarding this proposition? Select the most appropriate option for your request and I will get back to you shortly.

Discussion ¶

Oct. 5, 2023 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

The rapporteur, Mr Albert Vicaire, refers to the written report.

Dear colleagues, insurance is a expensive product; it remains today a high position for Belgian households, as they spend on it an average of €2,218 per year, according to Statbel’s 2023 figures. We needed, we wanted to put pressure on insurance companies to increase the quality of their offers and to lower the cost of policies.

The government is working on it. He developed, during this legislature, with the Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) comparison tools for the main insurance products. It also regulated group offers. Yesterday, at the Economy Committee, we adopted a text by Minister Dermagne to prevent “bancassurors” from locking their clients in too expensive insurance offers for 10, 15, or even 20 years, or the duration of a real estate loan.

The bill that is presented to you today follows the same objective. First, simplify the consumer’s life. Simplify the transition from one insurer to another and in any case facilitate consumer mobility at the level of the insurance sector.

Actually, there are still too many obstacles to terminating insurance contracts.

First, the termination must be made by recommended letter, by executor’s exploit or by delivery of the termination letter against receipt. Together with my group, we feel that this procedure is far too heavy and ⁇ not adapted to the weather, nor even to the digital environment.

Secondly, the consumer who wishes to terminate an insurance contract must do so at least three months before the annual maturity, otherwise the contract is tacitly renewed. This means that in some cases you can be blocked with a contract you no longer want to have for 13, 14, or even 15 months. The Ombudsman speaks of “forced marriage with his insurer.”

With this bill, we wanted to simplify consumer life and facilitate contract mobility. Specifically, three measures are planned.

First, in the future, the termination of the insurance contract can be done electronically, either by qualified electronic recommendation or in a secure online environment made available by the insurer. It is a measure of administrative simplification which was desired by Testachats and by Assuralia and which corresponds more to the air of time.

Secondly, the consumer will have the right to terminate his contract at any time, free of charge and without reason once the first year of the contract has passed. This is also a request from consumer organisations. This is a law that has existed in France and the Netherlands for several years.

Third, we wanted to provide mechanisms to avoid problems when switching from one insurance to another. We wanted to avoid insurance holes or even double blankets. In order to ⁇ this, it is provided that the consumer who changes insurer will be able to ask the new insurer or broker to settle the termination formalities on his behalf, in such a way as to ensure the continuity of coverage when changing insurer.

The bill also provides that the consumer will be informed of his/her right of termination in each premium notice and not only at the conclusion of the initial contract, as is currently the case.

It also provides for an evaluation of the device two years after the entry into force of the law.

Finally, in order to take into account the opinion of the SPF Economie, an entry into force one year after the publication in the Moniteur belge is planned to give the sector time to adapt.

Dear colleagues, I am pleased to have been able to count on your good collaboration during the review of the text. The majority and opposition have worked very seriously to make this text evolve.

Mrs. Speaker, through you, I would like once again to thank the legislative services of the House that have given us, as they do very regularly, a detailed note whose conclusions have enabled us to adapt the text and give it even more legal certainty.

I would also like to thank the Minister of Economy, Mr. Dermagne, but also the Secretary of State for Consumers, Mrs. Bertrand, who have also, within their sphere of competence, contributed to the drafting of the various amendments.

In addition, consumer representatives, representatives of insurers and insurance intermediaries were also consulted as part of the review of the text. In addition, the bill owes a lot to the opinion given by the Insurance Commission.

So we tried to do a serious work, majority and opposition, with all the opinions. We did not want to go into force with the Vivaldi majority. Instead, we took the time to come up with a text that we now seem to have achieved.

I want to say a word about the critics. In 2014, the possibility for consumers to terminate their insurance at any time free of charge and without reason was introduced in France. There was a debate, in particular, on the economic impact of this measure. According to insurers, this would destabilize the market, generate a massive turnover, increase management costs and therefore the cost of premiums. According to Minister Hamon and UFC-Que Choisir, this would increase the mobility of contracts, improve competition in the market and thus put pressure on margins and lower prices.

Objectively, what have we seen? Studies give reason to the second, former minister Hamon and UFC-What to Choose. In fact, following the Hamon Act, it was found that insurance companies froze their rates for two years, or even preferred a slight drop, which was anyway a drop since in all other countries, insurance premiums continued to increase. Then, it was seen that insurers have invested more in the quality of their services. The goal was to have more satisfied customers and less likely to leave their insurer.

I hope it will be the same in Belgium as well. In any case, we will follow the implementation with great attention. An evaluation is planned after two years. My group will not hesitate to return again, in the future, with other measures to improve the quality and reduce the cost of insurance.

Dear colleagues, the cost of insuring is ⁇ high in Belgium, as my colleague Prévot just said. What he did not say, however, is that the profits of the companies are also very high. Of all European countries, we are not lucky, because it is in Belgium that the cost of insurance has experienced the strongest increase in the last 15 years. In parallel, the insurers made tens of billions of profits.

We are facing a crisis of purchasing power. Everything grows and people can no longer. Housing insurance has increased by 10% this year. Faced with high prices, traditional parties always have the same answer: competition as the only word of order. This competition would supposedly lower prices. This is exactly what you claimed when you voted for the liberalization of the energy sector; we all saw that the result was an increase in prices.

The reality is that competition creates monopolies, which in turn impose high prices to make high profits. This demonstrates one thing: to lower prices, you need price control and profit limitation.

Therefore, instead of imposing limits on increases in insurance premiums, you choose to bet on the free market where the Belgians should play the competition between companies. In any case, your plan will not produce significant drops in the insurance price. If we want real price drops, we need price control, as the PTB proposes.