Jac Rinkes conducts research into the legal and practical aspects of the development of a harmonised European insurance law. Comparative law research plays a highly important role in view of the diversity of the private-law regulations governing insurance contracts in the EU member states. His primary focus lies on the constraints and barriers in creating the internal market for insurances. Topics such as improving the financial and economic aspects of insurances (Solvency II, a uniform and greater level of protection for policyholders) have a key role in the above.

Rinkes’s lectures focus mainly on the bases of insurance law (from a national, comparative law and European perspective) and on practical subjects, such as the financial service providers' duty of care, law governing insurance policies (general conditions of insurance) and the trend towards electronic insurance.

Rinkes is also professor of Private Law at the Open University (since 2001) and professor by special appointment of European Consumer Law at Maastricht University (since 2002). He serves as deputy judge at the District Court of Rotterdam and deputy justice at the Arnhem-Leeuwarden Court of Appeal. He is attached to the Amsterdam Centre for Insurance Studies (ACIS) and is also a deputy member of the Board of Examinations [College voor Examens] (mandated by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science) and chairs the Dutch Association of Insurers’ Disputes/Liability Committee. Rinkes has published numerous articles and a range of books on specialist subjects, and works as editor for journals such as Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Handelsrecht and European Journal of Commercial Contract Law.