Report Summarizes Insurance Study Findings from University of Pennsylvania (Insurers As Contract Influencers): Insurance

2026 MAR 04 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at NewsRx Policy and Law Daily -- Researchers detail new data in Insurance. According to news reporting from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, “Contract boilerplate degrading consumers’ litigation options is omnipresent, but a little mysterious. And that’s not just because no one reads it.”

The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research from the University of Pennsylvania, “We know that terms mandating arbitration, exculpating liability, requiring individualized litigation and shifting risk have proliferated in the last generation. But consumer contracts’ production and efficacy has been understudied. We bring to bear a new source of information about these questions from the literature on insurance-as-governance, asking how insurers influence boilerplate’s adoption and content. Interviewing participants in the liability insurance industry, we show that insurers refine boilerplate language, teach policyholders about its efficacy, and decline coverage when it is absent. At the same time, they rarely offer price breaks for adopting boilerplate, suggesting that at least some of the cost savings from consumer boilerplate may end up in the coffers of insurance firms rather than their clients. Insurers are surprisingly skeptical about the value of terms that have particularly excited proceduralists and consumer contract scholars- arbitration and liability waiver clauses-and believe their spread does not materially affect the risks that they insure.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “Overall, these qualitative findings suggest the value of a new, systematic, approach to the study and regulation of boilerplate.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Insurers As Contract Influencers. Minnesota Law Review, 2025;110(2):769-828. Minnesota Law Review can be contacted at: Minn Law Review Found, 229 19TH Ave South Univ Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA.

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting David A. Hoffman, University of Pennsylvania, Carey Sch Law, Philadelphia, PA 19104, United States.

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)