Draudimo brokerių įmonė

Abstract

Usually an insurance broker is determined as an independent agent, representing the interests of the assured. The activity of insurance brokers in Lithuania has been legitimated only in 1996 by accepting the Law on Insurance. Since the Republic of Lithuania has become the member of the European Union, the new Law of Insurance has been adopted in 2003 which adjusted all the guidelines of the Directive 2002/92/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council in insurance mediation. It has long been the law that, by approaching the broker and instructing him to obtain insurance, the insured thereby appoints the broker as their agent. In the cases where the broker is regarded as agent of the insurer, the question arises as to whether he remains the agent of the insured in any circumstances? The answer must be in the affirmative in respect of the latter, but there appears to be a potential conflict otherwise. It appears that a broker may indeed be the agent of both insured and insurer. The final Master’s work introduces the concept of an insurance broker company as an independent insurance intermediary, its activities, functions and services. The Lithuanian and European Union legal acts regulating the activities of the insurance intermediaries are reviewed in the work. The paper analyses the spheres where doubts over impartiality and objectivity of insurance intermediation activities carried out by insurance broker companies usually arouse, and also discusses the existing conflict of interest between the interests of a client represented by a company and individual interests of the company: the income of insurance broker company, concluding of insurance contracts through the mediation of insurance broker company, performance of a duty to reveal information and representation of the assured in case of the insured event or a dispute concerning the insured event. Possible cases of liability of insurance broker company and the duty of an insurance broker company to compensate for the damages are discussed. The provisions of a professional code of ethics of the Lithuanian insurance brokers are analyzed in this paper and recommendations for improving the code are provided.