The insurers are obliged to contract with the MTPL customers leaving Astra by mutual consent

Budapest, 21 October 2015 – The insurers are obliged to accept the motor third party liability insurance proposals of the former Astra customers – who terminated their previous contract by 30 September by mutual consent, and indicated this fact in their proposal – with effect of 1 October, even if the Astra Insurance Company have not yet registered the termination of the previous contract in the central claim history registration system.

Based on the reports of the insurance intermediaries and of the customers the Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB) received notice of a practice of the insurers, which impacts a few former Astra customers. According to this, the new MTPL contracts of certain registered keepers of the motor vehicle (drivers) – who terminated their motor third party liability insurance at the Hungarian branch office of the Astra Insurance Company by mutual consent by 30 September 2015 – concluded with another insurer are cancelled by retrospective effect and the already paid premium is refunded to the customer, if the Astra Insurance Company have not yet registered the termination of the previous MTPL contract in the central claim history registration system of the insurers (KKNYR). (In this case the new insurer is informed by KKNYR, when enquiring on the claim history certificate, that the registered keeper of the given motor vehicle still has a valid insurance with another insurer for the first day of the new contract.)

In the MNB's opinion – irrespective of the type of data included (or not included) in the policy register or in the KKNYR with regard to the previous contract – the insurers must accept the new contract as valid and record it as such in their internal register. When due to an error message returned by KKNYR an insurer has cancelled, with retrospective effect, the new contract concluded by it in its internal register, it must record the contract repeatedly and manage it in accordance with the content thereof.

The precondition of the foregoing is that in the MTPL insurance proposal submitted to the new insurer the customer must indicate Astra Insurance Company as previous insurer, mutual consent as the cause of terminating the previous MTPL contract, and 1 October 2015 as the risk inception date of the new contract. The new insurer is also expected to report the termination of the previous MTPL contract with the Astra Insurance Company with effect of 30 September 2015 by mutual consent to the policy register and the KKNYR.

As it is known, according to the amendment of the Act regulating the MTPL – passed by the National Assembly with urgency and enacted on 8 October 2015 – after the withdrawal of the home country's supervisory licence of an insurer operating a branch office in Hungary or rendering cross-border services – such as Astra – (and providing public information to this effect to the MNB), the MTPL customers thereof in Hungary may immediately take out a new insurance with another insurer. Their previous insurance is automatically terminated on the day preceding the risk inception date of the new contract. Accordingly, this problem no longer affects the MTPL customers of Astra wishing to take out a new insurance.

Magyar Nemzeti Bank