Life insurance: foreign experience and development need in Russia

Personal insurance is aimed at the protection of insurants’ valuable interests of nonmaterial benefits (life and health). According to the civil law doctrine, the life insurance is declared to be cumulative type of the personal insurance, but at the same time it isn’t imprinted in law, but is defined by the insurance companies only. The permanent life insurance market is the persistent leader among existing insurance markets in the foreign practices. However, in Russia the development level of this insurance type is quite low, which is corroborated by the surveys. Among the reasons of the weak current point the life insurance market takes in the country there is low level of people’s confidence in the functioning insurance companies (including the lack of confidence in their economic strength), as well as insufficient informing of the population. The life insurance is defined by numerous legislative acts in foreign countries (the Insurance Codes of France and New York, Insurance Law of China dated 1995), while the majority of Russian specialists in civil law describe the personal insurance in general, not distinguishing the life insurance as a separate type. The author defines the life insurance as an accumulative type of personal insurance that allows an insured person to get material support in the occurrence of an event stipulated in the contract. At that such events must concern life or health of the insurant. Besides, for a more rapid progress and propagation of the life insurance in the Russian society the author suggests to introduce the life insurance term in the Civil Code of the Russian Federation.