Those who live healthily will be rewarded: the concept behind Generali’s “Vitality” tariff can be boiled down to this simple formula. Since 2016, Generali and its subsidiaries Cosmos and Dialog have been offering this tariff for occupational disability insurance.
Anyone who exercises regularly and eats healthily not only receives discounts for certain cooperation partners, but also pays a lower insurance premium. This makes an “important contribution to society,” says Generali, and thousands of customers are motivated to adopt a health-conscious lifestyle in this way.
This assessment is not shared everywhere: the Association of Insured Persons (BdV) takes issue with the underlying conditions and filed a lawsuit last summer. The Munich Regional Court I has now made a judgment, which consumer advocates see as confirmed.
Violation of the transparency requirement
Among other things, the court found a violation of the transparency requirement: the average policyholder cannot understand how their behavior affects participation in the program and how it influences the bonus shares. Customers could neither foresee nor check in advance whether their premium would change.
The court also criticized the clause according to which health-conscious behavior is not considered as such if the customer does not communicate it to the insurer in a timely manner. Since the transmission risk was transferred solely to the customer, the Munich regional court recognized this as an unreasonable disadvantage. After all, they would also be the disadvantaged in those cases in which the insurer was responsible for the non-transfer.
Kleinlein: Insurers are throwing smokescreens
“We are pleased about this success for consumer protection. The verdict shows that insurers must formulate their conditions in an understandable manner instead of throwing smokescreens with non-transparent marketing promises,” said BdV board spokesman Axel Kleinlein, welcoming the verdict. In this way, the BdV ensured that the risk groups in occupational disability insurance were not reduced any further. “We hope that the insurance industry will recognize this ruling as a signal and will refrain from taking the individual behavior of individual insured persons into account in any way when calculating premiums in personal insurance,” said Kleinlein.
At Generali, the situation is naturally assessed a little differently – the insurer is taking legal action against the invalid judgment and has filed an appeal before the Munich Higher Regional Court, as a spokesman for procontra confirmed.
The Sprecer further explained that the Munich regional court had only decided on the effectiveness of certain clauses, but not on the product itself. “The court also expressed no concerns about the principle of taking health-conscious behavior into account,” says Generali.
2024-03-06 21:43:47
#Financial #news #Martin #Thaler #BdV #achieves #success #Dialog #Versicherung
