News / 10-01-2019 / Germany Discussion on electronic correspondence between insurer and customer

However, when it comes to the use of email correspondence, a couple of legal questions arise, eg if (and when) it can be expected that the client will read an email or if the way of communication is secure enough Is the insurer permitted to use a customers email address for contract or claim purposes, and eventually also in health or life assurance matters And, if so, what about the (technical) security requirementsIt is a standard under German law that an email at a minimum has to fulfil the security requirements and support encryption (the so called TLS in German) As an alternative approach, there is a discussion whether end-to-end-encryption is necessary This is a very secure way to send an encrypted email One disadvantage of this alternative approach is that there are higher costs and that end-to-end-encryption requires a specific technical set-upThus, most commentators in Germany believe that the solution should be somewhere in between If the customer has given hisher revocable consent for using hisher email address as a way of communication, it would be sufficient for the insurer to use TLS encrypted e-mails to correspond with the customer It is essential however that the customers email address has been given expressly for this purpose and not only for promotional purposesThere is also support for a more flexible approach which recognises that the more sensitive the shared data is (for instance health data), the higher the security requirements need to be In this regard, it is expected that insurers will notify the risks of any chosen method of correspondence to their customers The customers' informed consent is most likely to be the best possibility for technically and legally secure correspondence between insurer and client