Legal status of the insurer as participant of insurance contractual relations

Despite the regulation of insurance relations by Ukrainian legislation, due attention from both scientists and legislators requires the issue of improving the legal status of participants in insurance relations, determining their place in such relations in order to effectively protect their rights and interests.

The purpose of the article is to study the legal status of the insurer as a participant in insurance contractual relations, analyze existing approaches to its determination, establish the features of the insurer’s legal personality and provide proposals for further improvement of legislation in this area.

A characteristic feature of an insurance contract as an independent type of civil legal obligations within the group of contracts for the provision of services is that the conclusion of insurance contracts is directly the subject of activity of specially authorized participants in civil relations – insurance organizations (insurers). It has been established that the insurer, as a participant in insurance contractual relations, is a legal entity that, being specially created to provide insurance services and having received a license for this in the prescribed manner, undertakes the obligation, in accordance with the terms of the contract or an indication of the law, to provide insurance to the insured for a certain fee, to carry out an insurance payment (insurance compensation) to the insured or beneficiary as a result of the occurrence of a certain event (insured event). In insurance contractual relations, the insurer can only have a legal entity on its side, which is empowered to carry out insurance activities only after receiving a special permit (license), which indicates that legal entities – insurers have special legal personality. An insurance organization is endowed with the general legal capacity of a legal entity with a special scope of legal capacity as a financial institution.

Attention is drawn to the fact that a significant factor in the modernization of the civil legislation of Ukraine today is the global trend towards unification and harmonization of private law regulation, the formation of optimal legal norms for many areas of private law relations, including insurance. In this regard, the need is justified to determine at the legislative level the requirements for the insurer when it carries out certain types of compulsory insurance, which have their own specifics and provide for the creation of increased guarantees of protection for those persons who, due to objective circumstances, are exposed to increased risk and the extension of insurance protection to cases possible violation of public interests by the method of guaranteeing receipt of insurance payment (insurance compensation).

It is concluded that the recodification of the civil legislation of Ukraine opens up prospects for a qualitative update of the legal regulation of insurance contractual relations and will contribute to the development of the provision of insurance services, strengthening of legal institutions in the field of insurance, raising the standards of providing insurance services and ensuring adequate protection of the rights of participants in insurance relations.