Private International Law and On-Line Insurance Contracts

Abstract

This chapter presents relations between the insurance contract concluded online and private international law, including the role of private international law in online insurance. The considerations concerning this issue are because of the fact that online insurance has no borders and is a transnational service. In consequence, there arises a necessity to analyze the need of protecting policyholders and consider effective methods of introducing such a protection. Private international law rules are considered to be among such methods. No doubts PIL is gaining importance along with the increase of the cross-border transactions, which in turn, are on the increase with the vital help of the internet. What is the most important, it concerns not only B2B (as it used to be), but increasingly involves participation of the consumers. The purpose of the analysis is to show whether the PIL rules are effective rules. The chapter also presents other methods of protecting the parties to the transnational insurance contract and tries to show tendencies in modern jurisdictions worldwide. The issues considered in the chapter are viewed mostly from a European perspective, but as they go far beyond safe European legal reality, the international perspective of online contracting are also presented, especially with the aim of showing tendencies in online contracting in a global perspective.