보험계약에 대한 적합성 원칙의 적용에 관한 소고- 금융소비자 보호에 관한 법률(안)과 인슈어테크를 중심으로 -

Abstract

The Financial Services Commission (hereinafter “FSC”) introduced a bill for protecting financial consumers before the National Assembly (hereinafter “NA”) in November 2011. According to our Constitution, an agency of governmental services can introduce their bills before NA. After almost 8 years passed, the Strategy and Finance Committee of NA (hereinafter “SFC”) finalized its work of reviewing 11 bills for protecting financial products consumers (hereinafter “FOCs”) in November 2019. The bill of FSC intended to protect FOCs more widely through applying the suitability rule additionally to general insurance products. The rule is one of the measures which protect FOCs. It requests that an insurance business should ask some questions to a policyholder to get information of aims, needs, experiences, assets and so on from him or her. The rule comes from the “know-your-customer” rule of New York Stock Exchanges (NYSE rule 405) of USA. It didn't work for protecting FOCs at first. It worked for protecting members of NYSE. After "boiler-room" cases made the big chaos in the 1970s, it has worked for protecting FOCs. However, it doesn't work if a FOC would wish to invest her assets aggressively. That is the limit of the rule. In the EU, The United Kingdom and Germany followed the Directive of the EU (Directive 2002/92/EC) which includes the rule but there are differences between the UK and Germany. The UK produced the Insurance Code of Business (hereinafter “ICOB”) to respect the self-regulation of insurance business associations. The ICOB takes its stance on the principle-based regulation. Germany also put the Directive into the Insurance Contract Act (hereinafter “VVA”) section 6. The standard is, however, the Directive of the EU if it needs to judge that there were violations of the VVA section 6. The legislation of Japan is very similar to us. The laws of financial regulation are separated by an area of financial business. The rule in Japan applies only to the area of investment business. Not the insurance business. In November 2019, SFC resolved its alternative bill which was based on the FSC's bill and included that the rule applied widely to the general insurance products. A matter of applying the rule has therefore moved into what the FSC should establish for its regulation to apply the rule practically. After the FSC introduced its bill before the NA at first, things are changed dramatically during the last 10 years. "Insurtech" (insurance + technology) has come up surprisingly and the financial structure of insurance businesses has gone down seriously. the FSC should consider that the environment of the insurance business is changed and that the insurance itself is changing into the management of risks. In the legal aspects of that, the FSC should establish its regulation guidelines for the legal standard in case the rule is accomplished by Insurtech.