The difference between overseas investment insurance and general private insurance

There are essential differences between overseas investment insurance system and domestic general insurance system. First of all, from the insurer's point of view, insurers are ordinary commercial companies, while overseas investment insurance institutions are mostly administrative agencies of a country. For example, Japan is the Trade Bureau of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, New Zealand is the national insurance agency, Sweden is the Export Credit Guarantee Committee, and the underwriting agency in the United States was the International Development Agency before 1969, and it was underwritten by "overseas private investment companies" after 1969. The most typical one is the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), which has an international personality and underwrites the political risks of investors in developing countries, thus showing the particularity of the overseas investment insurance system. Of course, the overseas investment insurance system also adopts the company system, such as the private overseas investment company in the United States. However, in the United States, a country that insists on private ownership and market economy, private overseas investment companies are not completely commercial companies, because overseas private investment companies are "institutions under the the State Council policy of the United States", and German companies are also underwritten by state-owned companies, but the companies are only responsible for implementing investment insurance business, and whether or not to underwrite them is up to the government. Secondly, from the content of underwriting, the overseas investment insurance system covers political risks, not commercial risks, while general insurance covers natural disasters and accidents, not political risks or commercial risks. Political risk refers to the risks that are related to the politics, society and laws of the host country and can be controlled by artificial non-investors. The so-called man-made risk mainly refers to the risk caused by the behavior of the host government. Natural disasters are non-human factors, while accidents are human factors, but the losses are due to the personal behavior of the third party, not from the government, which is why the overseas investment insurance system is different from the general insurance system. The overseas investment insurance system covers political risks, which are caused by the legislative or administrative actions of other governments, which makes the exercise of subrogation different from general insurance. According to the general principle of subrogation, subrogation should be claimed to the third party who caused the loss. In the overseas investment insurance system, the object of subrogation is other countries, which makes the general commercial organizations face many difficulties in claiming compensation. Ordinary commercial organizations, like ordinary private individuals, can claim rights from the state in two ways: first, through the relief form of the host country, but through the judicial relief form of the host country, they may encounter government protectionism, because political risks are originally caused by government actions, and now it is almost impossible to deny their actions through the government itself. On the other hand, such lawsuits are usually protracted and expensive, and private individuals usually cannot spend such time and energy. Second, through the judicial relief of the capital-importing countries themselves. But there are also obstacles in this way. Based on the principle of national sovereignty, a country enjoys judicial immunity, and the court may not accept a case in which another country is the defendant. Even if some countries advocate the theory of limited immunity, they can accept cases in which the state is the defendant. However, based on the theory of state behavior, state behaviors that cause political risks, such as expropriation and prohibition, are all state behaviors and cannot be judged. The particularity of this political risk makes private investment companies face great obstacles in exercising subrogation. Naturally, only by seeking the combination with state power and trying to exert pressure on the host country, the best choice is to use bilateral agreements between countries to impose binding force on the host country. After the occurrence of political risks, specific institutions will make subrogation claims in a specific way agreed in advance. The government of the investor's home country has signed an international agreement with the government of the country where the investment project is located in advance, recognizing that professional companies, as insurers of investment political risks, will enjoy the right of transnational subrogation in the future. This particularity of subrogation makes the subrogation in the contractual relationship in a country's domestic private law cross national boundaries, but it is "public law" and "internationalization", which makes the subrogation system in the overseas investment insurance system have international significance.