Insurance Contracts CP - Law Reform Commission

1.68 The Commission provisionally recommends that regulatory bodies (in particular the Financial
Regulator and the National Consumer Agency) who currently have statutory responsibilities in connection
with the insurance industry should continue to liaise with each other, and with representatives of the
insurance industry, in order to develop comprehensive statutory Codes of Practice setting out standards
of best practice, building on the best practice standards developed by the Irish Insurance Federation and
on the statutory model of the Financial Regulator‟s Consumer Protection Code 2012. The Commission
also provisionally recommends that these statutory Codes of Practice should form the basis for the
content of insurance contracts.
1.69 The Commission provisionally recommends that legislation should provide that in any litigation
or other dispute resolution process statutory Codes of Practice setting out standards of best practice
should be admissible in evidence; and that, if any provision of such Code is relevant to a question arising
in the litigation or other dispute resolution process, the provision may be taken into account in determining
that question, but that this would be without prejudice to the substantive rights between the parties.
1.70 The Commission provisionally recommends that the legislative framework being proposed in
this Consultation Paper should, in general, apply to consumers as defined for the purposes of the
jurisdiction of the Financial Services Ombudsman, namely natural persons and businesses with an
annual turnover not exceeding €3 million.
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