The President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) signed agreements on insurance products with investment elements with 16 insurance companies. They will reduce surrender charges for these clients who were not covered by previous decisions of UOKiK. The agreements also concerns seniors and they become effective on 1 January 2017.
In March 2016 the Office completed proceedings concerning unit-linked life insurance policies. The Office was questioning the collection of excessive charges in the case of premature insurance policy cancellation by clients. These charges sometimes entailed a loss of all client’s savings. UOKiK accused the insurance companies that the use of surrender charges forces consumers to bear costs that should be included in business risk. As a result of the completed proceedings, the insurers voluntarily obliged themselves to reduce surrender charges in existing contracts falling within the scope of the proceedings, as well as to delete them from new contract templates. These decisions concerned around 612,000 clients who have concluded contracts since 2014. However, due to prescription, they did not cover those consumers who had signed their contracts before 2014.
