The Federal Ministry of Justice commissioned the Institute in 2001 to complete a comparative law study on the development of insurance contract law with special emphasis on Europe.  The backdrop to the assignment was the expert commission on insurance law reform which was established in 2000 and whose membership included Jürgen Basedow, Director of the Institute. This reform commission had the task of developing recommendations for the revision of the nearly 100 year old Versicherungsvertragsgesetz (Insurance Contract Act). Its final report was delivered in 2004. In 2006 the German government submitted a bill on a new Insurance Contract Act to the Bundestag. This bill again draws from the comparative expertise laid down in the Institute’s expert report.
 
The comparative law study undertaken by the Institute comprised the European nations that had already reformed their insurance codes in the previous years and decades as well as those countries that were shortly to do so, i.e., Belgium, Finland, France, Greece, Luxembourg, Holland, Austria, Sweden and Spain. Non-European, common-law insurance regulations were also reported upon in the analysis.  The expert analysis addressed a variety of fundamental insurance law questions such as the insurers’ duty to furnish information and advice, and the effect of behaviour by the insured contrary to their obligations, i.e., differentiating the sanctioning of such behaviour from the “all-or-nothing” principle practised in Germany.  Contemporaneously, the Institute addressed other issues particular to insurance contract law - genetic testing certainly standing in the foreground.  The work on this commissioned expert report was being done in close association with the European Insurance Contract Law Project Group, also ongoing at the Institute.