The Insurance Commission confirmed that members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer community may designate their partners as beneficiaries in their insurance plan.
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In a legal opinion issued to the University of the Philippines College of Law, Gender Law and Policy Program, the Commission said: “The [IC] affirms your position that the insured who secures a life insurance policy on his or her own life may designate any individual as beneficiary.”
This follows Professor E. (Leo) Battad, program director of the UP College of Law Gender Law and Policy Program, seeking guidelines on the right of LGBTQ+ members to designate their domestic partners as beneficiaries of their life insurance.
Insurance Commissioner Dennis Funa confirmed to Philstar that members of the LGBTQ+ community may present the legal opinion “if an insurance agent would have an adverse view.”
“An individual who has secured a life insurance policy on his or her own life may designate any person as beneficiary provided that such designation does not fall under the enumerations provided by Article 739 of the Civil Code, without prejudice to the application of Section 12 of the Amended Insurance Code,” he continued.
Funa addressed Battad’s concern that some LGBTQ+ members were permitted from designating their domestic partner as beneficiary. Insurance companies cited the “lack of an ‘insurable interest’ of the domestic partner on the life of the insured.”
“[I]nsofar as life insurance is concerned, it suffices that the person securing the life insurance policy has an insurable interest in the life of being insured,” the Commissioner said in response to that.
He specified that the Insurance Code of the Philippines provides that “every person has an insurable interest in the life and health…of himself, of his spouse and his children.”
“There is no legal impediment to the designation as beneficiary of the domestic partner of an insured who has secured a life insurance policy on his or her own life,” Funa also said.
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