The Vienna Commercial Court has ruled a guarantee clause for a unit-linked life insurance from UNIQA insurance as illegal.
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Accordingly, costs such as closing or administrative costs may not be deducted from a guarantee, as the Association for Consumer Information (VKI) announced on Wednesday. The judgment in this test case is final.
In a representative action in 2018, the court declared such a guarantee clause to be legally ineffective and judged it to be non-transparent. The total cost burden is not evident from this and therefore the amount of the guaranteed capital is not apparent. The consumer advocates said that the test case on the consequences of this judgment was also right. It is very likely that such guarantee clauses are also contained in contracts of other insurers, it said from the VKI today to the APA.
According to the press release, the subject of the sample procedure was a unit-linked life insurance policy from UNIQA with a capital guarantee. The customer received only 82.21 percent of the premiums paid at the right time, despite the claim. With a total premium amount of 201,687 euros paid in, the payout amount was only 165,811 euros. The insurer invoked the following guarantee clause in the contract: “On the agreed date, the investor receives a capital guarantee on the savings amounts (= invested capital, this corresponds to the amounts paid in minus insurance, tax, costs, fees, risk contribution) and those from the investment generated income. “
The court ruled that due to the lack of transparency in the guarantee clause, the insurance company was not entitled to deduct costs and had to pay the customer the premium amount paid minus insurance tax. It awarded the plaintiff the entire sum sued in the amount of EUR 27,808. The court rebuked the insurer’s position that the clause had been effectively agreed in the individual case because of the clarification of the broker and that the cost deductions were therefore lawful.
The UNIQA share traded in Vienna on Wednesday 0.61 percent lower at 6.53 euros.
(Conclusion) itz / sp
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