보험 관련 소비자문제 감소를 위한 보험소비자역량 향상 방안

Abstract

In today's financial environment characterized by civil complaints about incomplete sales and ongoing launches of various insurance products, it is important for financial consumers to develop the capabilities needed to protect themselves as well as powerful financial policies to regulate insurance companies for their protection. This study thus set out to develop a scale of “insurance consumer competency” to figure out the level of insurance competency among financial consumers and examine the level of insurance consumer competency with the scale. For these purposes, the investigator conducted an online survey with 1,000 financial consumers as well as experts for their opinions. The main findings were as follows: First, the investigator devised a set of items based on previous studies and expert opinions, tested the items in the process of ensuring validity in measurements, and selected items both with validity and reliability. The final scale consisted of eight items on insurance consumers' attitudes, 37 on insurance consumers' knowledge(six on insurance terms, 11 on insurance products, and 20 on the stages of insurance purchasing), and 12 on insurance consumers' skills. Secondly, they scored 55.56 out of 100 in insurance consumer competency, and their scores were a little bit above the median point. Of the subareas, they scored the highest points in insurance consumers' knowledge(56.59), which was followed by insurance consumers' skills(55.22) and insurance consumers' attitudes(55.20) in the order. As part of efforts to improve insurance consumers' attitudes that scored the lowest points, insurance companies need to carry out active promotional activities and minimize civil complaints about insurance so that financial consumers will be able to consider insurance positively. Finally, the study examined differences in insurance consumer competency according to the general characteristics of the subjects and found that financial consumers' insurance competency were high according to the following sociodemographic characteristics: old age, high educational background, an occupation in business administration/management/profession/office/technical, living in one's own house or in lease, a spouse, many family members, and experiences with insurance-related education. As for economic characteristics, the level of insurance competency was high among financial consumers with high average monthly household income and high average monthly household living expenses.