OSAGO rules approved by the Central Bank were sent for verification to the Supreme Court

This is a rule that allows insurers to terminate an insurance contract if false or incomplete information is revealed.

The policy of compulsory motor third party liability insurance today is mandatory for all drivers in the Russian Federation. The rules governing this segment of insurance are approved by the regulator, whose role is played by the Central Bank. Now the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation will check the OSAGO rules: the reason was the case of a motorist who was unable to receive compensation after she got into an accident through no fault of her own.

The OSAGO rules, which came under the attention of the Supreme Court, relate to the rights of insurers to terminate the «auto-citizenship» contract in case of revealing «false or incomplete” information provided by the client (that is, the policyholder). Due to a violation of the Civil Code, a car owner filed a lawsuit with the Central Bank, who did not receive compensation for a car damaged in an accident.

The accident happened in March 2020. The driver was blamed for the accident, who turned out to be a taxi driver who did not inform his insurance company that he was engaged in commercial passenger transportation (on average, an OSAGO policy for taxi drivers is more expensive than for ordinary drivers). As a result, the company, in accordance with paragraph 1.15 of the insurance rules, unilaterally terminated the contract of autocitizenship due to the provision of false information.

The insurer did not pay the injured party (the amount of damage was approximately 100 thousand rubles), since at the time of the accident it was issued in In May 2019, the OSAGO policy was already considered invalid (the company terminated the contract on December 1, 2019). Now the owner of a car damaged in an accident, with the help of a lawsuit, demands to recognize the OSAGO rules as partially invalid. The defendant in the case is the Central Bank, which approved the said norms.

The plaintiff believes that clause 1.15 of the insurance rules contradicts Article 944 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, which does not allow the insurer to invalidate the insurance contract if “the circumstances that the insured has kept silent about have already disappeared.” The fact is that the driver who caused the accident lost his taxi driver's license back in July 2019, while the policy was revoked later, in December.

According to Kommersant, the Russian Union of Motor Insurers believes that paragraph 1.15 of the OSAGO rules does not contradict the article of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. The Central Bank stated that they would voice their position on this issue during the court session. AlfaStrakhovanie noted that they notified the client of the termination of his policy due to false information. «The legality of the company's actions was confirmed by the decisions of the financial commissioner and the court,» the insurer added.

According to the victim's lawyer, Andrey Sologubov, the decision of the Supreme Court following the audit will be important for many motorists. Referring to the media, he said that «more than half of the taxi drivers in the Moscow region use incorrectly issued policies, while about 60% of accidents occur precisely with the participation of this category of taxi drivers.» Moreover, according to the head of the competence center of the International Eurasian Taxi Forum Stanislav Schwagerus, the problem is that insurers continue to massively refuse to issue policies for this category of drivers.