The Two-Year Limitation Period in CIMA Insurance Contracts: What Policyholders and Insurers Must Track
Every claim arising from an insurance contract governed by the CIMA Insurance Code is subject to a short, two-year limitation period, with its own set of deferred starting points and a ten-year exception for life and personal-accident cover. Missing the distinction between these rules is one of the most common — and most costly — mistakes in claims handling across the CIMA zone.
Direct answer. Under Article 28 of the CIMA Insurance Code (Livre I, Titre I, Chapitre IV), all actions arising from an insurance contract are time-barred after two years from the event giving rise to them ("l'événement qui y donne naissance"). This short prescription period, however, does not always start running on the date of the loss itself: the Code sets out deferred starting points for concealment or misstatement of risk, for losses the claimant genuinely did not know about, and for third-party recourse claims. Life insurance contracts, and personal-accident contracts where the beneficiaries are the deceased insured's heirs, benefit from a materially longer, ten-year period — a threshold raised from five to ten years by a Decision of the CIMA Council of Ministers of 12 April 2018.
Legal basis
Article 28's default rule is a flat two-year prescription running from the event that gives rise to the action. Three exceptions shift that starting point: first, where the dispute concerns a reticence, omission, or false or inaccurate declaration about the risk, time runs only from the day the insurer became aware of it; second, for the loss itself (sinistre), time runs only from the day the interested parties learned of it, provided they can prove they were unaware of it until then; third, where the insured's action against the insurer is triggered by a third party's claim against the insured, time runs only from the day that third party brought legal proceedings against the insured or was indemnified by the insured. Separately, the article extends the ordinary period to ten years for life and capitalisation contracts, and for personal-accident contracts where the beneficiaries are the deceased insured's ayants droit — a threshold the Council of Ministers raised from five years in its 12 April 2018 decision. That same 2018 reform added transitional obligations: insurers were given three years from 12 April 2018 to reliably identify insureds and beneficiaries under their in-force contracts and pay sums due to them, after which any prescribed and unpaid amounts must be remitted to the relevant caisse de dépôts et consignations (or an equivalent body) within a further two years — a direct response to dormant, unclaimed policy benefits across the zone.
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Analysis
For an insurer operating across several CIMA states, Article 28 has three practical consequences that are easy to get wrong in claims files. First, the "event" that starts time running is not always the date of loss: a claims team that mechanically calendars two years from the accident date, without checking whether the insured can show genuine, provable ignorance of the loss, or whether the claim in fact concerns an omission on the risk, risks miscalculating the limitation date in either direction. Second, because the ordinary two-year period and the ten-year life/personal-accident period sit side by side in the same article, a mixed portfolio — for example, a group policy combining motor liability with a personal-accident rider for passengers — requires the claims handler to classify each head of claim correctly rather than applying a single limitation date to the whole file. Third, the 2018 reform's dormant-funds mechanism means an insurer's obligations do not end simply because a claim has prescribed: unclaimed, prescribed sums must eventually be identified and either paid out or remitted to the State depository, making the insurer's beneficiary-identification systems a live compliance issue rather than a one-off underwriting exercise.
Recommendation
An insured or beneficiary who believes a claim may be close to time-barred should establish, in writing and as early as possible, the precise date on which they first had actual knowledge of the loss (or of the insurer's position on an alleged omission), since that date — not the loss date — may be what starts the two-year clock under Article 28's exceptions. Insurers and reinsurers operating in the CIMA zone should audit their claims and beneficiary-identification systems against the 2018 transitional obligations, and confirm, contract by contract, which of the ordinary two-year or the extended ten-year period applies before treating a claim as prescribed — an incorrect classification exposes the insurer to a claim it wrongly believed was time-barred, or conversely to a dormant-funds remittance obligation it has not tracked.
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