보험소비자보호에 관한 연구

A Study on Insurance Consumer Protection – Mainly on common provisions of 2012 pre-announcement of legislation -

Insurance is a social economic system, which relieves economical anxiety due to uncertain physical or material damages. So, insurance law revision needs prudent review on protection of insurance consumer. The purpose of Insurance law revision is in modernization and modernized insurance must correspond to modern society and global standard. Among the revision, protection of insured consumer is the most important task. You can easily find such precedents in advanced legislation cases. According to Section 6, Clause 1 of German insurance contract act, which has been revised in July 5th 2007, and activated since beginning of 2008, 'If the difficulty in assessing the insurance being offered or the policyholder himself and his situation gives occasion thereto, the insurer must ask him about his wishes and needs and, also bearing in mind an appropriate relation between the time and effort spent in providing this advice and the insurance premiums to be paid by the policyholder, the insurer shall advise the policyholder and state reasons for each of the pieces of advice in respect of a particular insurance. He shall document this, taking into account the complexity of the contract of insurance being offered.' This statement regulates responsibility of insurer to consult and provides regulatory protection to policyholder. If this has not been fulfilled or documented, such act can be a legal basis of compensation. A strong will of legislator to protect insurance consumer can be seen through above legislation. South Korean government also have made pre-announcement of legislation on amendments of insurance law, according to social environment change and new insurance superintendence change, in June, 15th, 2012 through public announcement '2012-156' of Department of Justice. Such amendment has been prepared under principle of rational and fair balance between insurance company and insurance consumer, balance among civil act, insurance inspection regulation and foreign countries' legislation cases, protection of policyholder, and procurement of good intention of insurance system. However, despite of commercial law commission's effort on insurance law amendments, there can be seen some insufficient items on aspects of insurance consumer. So following thesis will cover insurance consumer protection mainly on insurer’s duty to deliver and explain the insurance clauses, insurance agency's authority, duty of disclosure related regulations, and regulation on period of extinction session on insurance claim.