보험회사에 대한 공정거래법 적용과 그 한계

Abstract

Even after the legislation of "Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act" in 1980, korean insurers have enjoyed broad exemptions from antitrust enforcement either by statutory provisions in MRFTA itself or in the form of business practices that were cognized and understood by insurance supervisory authority. In the nineties, however, National Assembly have been narrowing the statutory exemptions toward insurers in continuous revisions of MRFTA. In 1999 the totally revised MRFTA proclaimed that insurers would be under the same jurisdiction as in other industries, and also provided that the general rule for antitrust exemption would be also available for the insurers. In the meantime, Korean Fair Trade Commission have been very active in combating restrictive business practices in insurance market. In collusion cases of premium rates both in the field of fire & marine and also in life insurances, KFTC have levied large sum of administrative fines on major insurers in the nation. After a brief review over structures of Korean insurance market, this paper describes the provisionary reach of antitrust toward insurers both life and non-life. And then it explores Article 58 of MRFTA in some detail which is regarded as basic provision for antitrust exemption, and then moves on the topic of mutual agreements of insurers, provided in the Article 125 of Insurance Business Act, that justifies collusive acts of insurers under some requirements.