Insurance Law · 15.09.2026

Insurance Claim Denial in Vietnam: When the Refusal Fails

Lawyer UnilawReading time: 6 min

An insurance claim denial in Vietnam usually arrives as a short letter citing an exclusion clause. Very often that letter does not survive a court. The Law on Insurance Business 2022 puts a heavy evidential burden on the insurer before any exclusion can bite, and Vietnamese courts have enforced it against some of the largest insurers in the country. This guide explains what the statute demands, how the courts have applied it, and where policyholders still lose.

The rule behind most insurance claim denials in Vietnam

Article 19(2) of the Law on Insurance Business 2022 is the provision to read first. Where a policy contains an exclusion, the insurer must state it clearly in the contract. It must explain that exclusion clearly and fully. And it must hold evidence that the buyer received the explanation and understood it when signing.

Three obligations sit in that sentence, not one. Drafting the exclusion is not enough. Explaining it is not enough. The insurer must be able to prove the explanation happened. Article 19(3) adds a further limit. Did force majeure or an objective obstacle delay notice of the loss? Then no late-notice exclusion applies.

How an insurance claim denial in Vietnam falls apart

Judgment 35/2023/DS-GĐT, decided by the High People’s Court in Da Nang on 19 September 2023, shows the failure mode. A fishing vessel insured for VND 18 billion caught fire and sank in July 2019. The insurer refused. It argued the vessel had strayed outside its permitted zone, and that the voyage monitoring device had stopped transmitting.

The court looked at the contract itself. Article 2 of the policy did not set out the exclusions. It merely cross-referred to an internal company decision that was never attached as an annex. The selling agent conceded he had posted the policy by bus. He had sent the rules separately as a PDF, never on paper. The owner said he never received them, and the insurer could produce nothing to prove delivery.

That ended the exclusion. The court ordered payment of the full VND 18 billion plus VND 3,422,465,753 in late-payment interest, a total of VND 21,422,465,753.

The Supreme Court’s correction

Policyholders should not stop reading there. On 24 June 2024 the Council of Judges of the Supreme People’s Court, in Judgment 35/2024/DS-GĐT, quashed that decision along with the appellate and first-instance judgments, and sent the case back for retrial.

Two points drove the reversal. His signed insurance proposal form carried standard wording: he had been supplied with the terms and rules, and fully advised about the product. He also held a statutory right to ask the insurer to explain the conditions, and he never used it. Nor had the lower courts, said the Supreme Court, ever assessed the degree of fault on each side.

The practical lesson is uncomfortable but useful. A signature on the proposal form is evidence against the insured. Read that form before signing it, and strike out any confirmation that is untrue.

When an insurance claim denial in Vietnam meets the insurer’s own survey

Judgment 01/2025/KDTM-GĐT of 11 March 2025 runs the other way. Before insuring 3,670 tonnes of stone, a cargo insurer examined the carrying vessel. It checked the registration, the technical safety certificate and the liability cover. That vessel sank in August 2021, by which time its technical certificate had expired.

The insurer invoked an exclusion for uncertified vessels. Its argument failed. Cover had attached while the certificate was still valid, and the voyage had not ended. The insurer had never taken an undertaking about the vessel’s continuing condition. It never explained the exclusion. It never prompted anyone to renew the certificate. Having vetted and accepted the risk, it could not later disown it. Payment of VND 2,248,609,000 plus VND 470,914,170 interest was upheld.

Misstatement: what Article 22 actually requires

Insurers frequently justify an insurance claim denial in Vietnam by alleging the buyer withheld information. Article 22(2) sets a much narrower test than that. Cancellation needs two things. The buyer must have deliberately given false or incomplete information, and done so in order to take out the policy and be paid.

Careless omission does not meet that standard. Nor does an answer to a question the insurer never asked. Article 22(3) works symmetrically. An insurer that deliberately withholds or falsifies information hands the buyer the right to cancel, recover the premium and claim damages.

Deadlines that quietly decide the claim

Two periods matter, and policyholders miss the first one far more often than the second.

Article 30(1): the claim file must be submitted within one year of the insured event. Periods of force majeure or objective obstacle do not count against it.
Article 30(2): where the insured proves they did not know when the event occurred, the year runs from the day they learned of it.
Article 30(3): for liability cover, the year runs from the day the third party makes its demand.
Article 31(1): absent an agreed period, the insurer must pay within 15 days of receiving a complete and valid file.
Article 31(2): late payment carries interest for the whole period of delay.

That interest is not token. In the fishing vessel case it came to more than VND 3.4 billion on its own.

After payment: the insurer becomes the claimant

Article 54 transfers the insured’s claim against the party at fault to the insurer once compensation has been paid. Judgment 5/2023 of 20 March 2023 shows the mechanism working. A vessel holed its bottom and 2,400.14 tonnes of clinker were lost, the classic shape of a cargo claim. The cargo insurer paid VND 2,613,752,460, took the assignment, and sued the carrier.

Two side points from that case repay attention. The surveyor’s report stood even though the master refused to countersign several site records. Neither the charterparty nor any statute required his signature. And the insurer’s branch could not be the plaintiff: lacking legal personality, it had to sue through its parent company.

Answering an insurance claim denial in Vietnam

Ask the insurer, in writing, to produce the evidence Article 19(2) requires: the signed acknowledgement that the exclusion was explained, and proof that the rules were delivered. Check whether the exclusion appears in the contract itself or only in a document referred to. Diarise the one-year deadline from the date of loss, not from the date of the refusal. Did the insurer inspect the subject matter before underwriting? Say so early. That inspection narrows what it can later disclaim. Keep the survey correspondence, even the parts that look unhelpful. Our insurance law team can review the refusal letter against the policy file. The full judgments sit in our case database.

UniLaw advises insurers and policyholders from offices in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Nha Trang, with particular depth in marine insurance and cargo claims.