Insurance secrecy

Abstract

This article discusses the issues related to insurance secrecy, which is an important matter from the perspective of insurance practice. The insurance is based on clients’ confidence in the payment of benefits if an event covered by the insurance has occurred as well as on the assumption that crucial data concerning major facts of the client’s life provided in the course of concluding the insurance contract (specifically in the medical survey concerning the insured’s health condition) and while the insurance relationship persists will be disclosed to nobody in an unauthorised manner. Insurance secrecy is a professional secrecy regulated by the Act of 11 September 2015 on Insurance and Reinsurance Activity in order to ensure the confidentiality of data transmitted and to maintain clients’ confidence in insurance companies. Insurance secrecy is related to the protection standard of the right to privacy, with this right constituting one of the major values.This article deals with the temporal, territorial, material and subjective scope of applying the insurance secrecy, principles of liability for the breach thereof, as well as the admissibility of consent to release the information covered by the secrecy, by citing different voices concerning those issues. In addition, the author presents judgments relating to a number of aspects concerning the practical application of provisions concerning the insurance secrecy and highlighting the basic characteristic of the institution in question. Some practical aspects related to the application of the insurance secrecy are also addressed, taking into account the current realities of the insurance market, including technical solutions (e.g. social media), by means of which beneficiaries of insurance contracts or the insured themselves inform the public about the liquidation procedure, which puts the insurance companies, or more broadly the insurance distributors, in a more difficult position in terms of their image. Finally, some de lege ferenda proposals are put forward in respect of those aspects of insurance secrecy, which, in the authors’ opinion, need to be dealt with by the legislator.