Yongqiang 

HAN

Dr Yong Qiang HAN is a stipendiary Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the CBFL, NUS Faculty of Law, where he was a post-doctoral Research Fellow from August 2014 to January 2017. He obtained his PhD degree in law from the University of Aberdeen (est 1495) in November 2013. His main research interests are insurance (contract) law and regulation. He is an Academic Drafting Member (from 2015) of the Europe-based research project Principles of Reinsurance Contract Law. His English publications include the monograph Policyholder’s Reasonable Expectations (Oxford, Hart Publishing 2016), his PhD thesis The Relevance of Adams and Brownsword’s Theory of Contract Law Ideologies to Insurance Contract Law Reform in Britain: an interpretative and evaluative approach (Aberdeen, University of Aberdeen 2013), and the peer-reviewed article ‘Good Faith in Insurance Law: general and independent, not a duty but an interpretative principle’ in Insurance Law Journal, Volume 28 (No. 2) forthcoming soon in April 2017.

He was also a Researcher with the NUS Centre for Banking & Finance Law between 3 August 2015 to 31 January 2017.

Policyholder’s Reasonable Expectations
(book contract with Hart Publishing secured, with publishing in the first-half of 2016)
Over the past two decades, protecting contractual parties’ reasonable expectations has incrementally gained judicial acceptance in English contract law. In contrast, however, the similar ‘doctrine’ of policyholder’s reasonable expectations in insurance law has largely not been accepted by practicing and academic lawyers. This is injurious firstly to the protection of consumer policyholders’ interests in investment-linked life insurance products such as with-profits policies, and secondly to business policyholders’ reasonable expectations of coverage of particular risks. This book seeks to remedy these two problems. For this purpose, this book discovers firstly that ‘policyholder’s reasonable expectations’ in investment-linked life insurance has an actuarial basis which merits more judicial attention. It also discovers that the cause of the second problem is the long-held misunderstanding about the legal nature of the ‘doctrine’. In this respect, this book argues that the ‘doctrine’ should instead be re-characterized as a ‘principle’ as originally intended in the US. On this basis, the book argues further that the second problem can be resolved by bringing insurance law more in line with contract law, or in other words by recognising a principle of policyholder’s reasonable expectations. To that end, lawyers should more consider the purpose of the particular insurance in specific context when interpreting insurance contract terms.

Loss Ratio, Insurance Index, and a New Prong of the Philosophy of Insurance Regulation
In insurance, loss ratio is the ratio of insurers’ payments to premiums. Insurance industry statistics show that loss ratio in European market from 2003 to 2012 is significantly higher than that in emerging insurance markets like India and China, in which insurers have very high premiums income though. It is a reasonable concern that other emerging insurance markets like those in ASEAN might have the similar problem. This research is intended to identify and address this problem. For this purpose, it looks into the insurance industry data in representative insurance markets, and argues that loss ratio regulation should complement solvency regulation. In line with that and with reflection on insurance penetration and insurance density as the conventional insurance industry index, this research also proposes additional index that are not premiums-oriented but payments-oriented instead.

Insurance Regulation in Singapore
Insurers in the Singaporean market are predominantly international corporations headquartered in Europe and the US. The book-chapters are to investigate how insurance regulation in Singapore fits (or should fit) the relevant regulation in the insurers’ home jurisdictions meanwhile catering its own need in the Asia/ASEAN insurance market so that it can sustainably remain as an insurance hub which is expected to be sufficiently and sustainably attractive to international insurance corporations in its inevitable competition with other rising insurance markets in the region.