Going forward, when signing up for insurance, it will become easier to designate a spouse or family member as an authorized claimant. This comes as a system to designate an "unnamed" claimant, which does not require consent for personal data, is introduced.
The Financial Supervisory Service said on the 26th that it discussed seven agenda items containing these measures at the second meeting of the Financial Consumer Protection Advisory Committee, held on the 23rd in the afternoon and chaired by Lee Chan-jin, head of the Financial Supervisory Service. The meeting was attended by six internal members of the Financial Supervisory Service and 10 external members from consumer and civic groups and academia.
At the meeting, a plan to simplify the authorized claimant designation system was discussed first in response to the increase in dementia patients due to aging. This system allows a subscriber to designate in advance someone who can claim insurance on their behalf in case the subscriber has difficulty filing a claim directly due to dementia or an accident.
Currently, designating an authorized claimant is cumbersome, requiring the entry of a specific person's name and consent for the provision of personal data. Going forward, the system will be improved to allow spouses or lineal ascendants and descendants to be designated as authorized claimants on an unnamed basis. In this case, separate personal data consent procedures are omitted.
The unnamed authorized claimant designation system will first apply to insurance products related to serious illnesses such as cancer, brain diseases, and cardiovascular diseases. After further discussion, a plan will be pursued to expand it to all disease insurance products.
Measures to explain the investment risks of public offering funds more simply were also discussed. Despite their length, current public offering fund prospectuses often fail to adequately convey key risks. Going forward, the first page of the simplified prospectus will be required to list four major risks, including the risk of principal loss, and the past maximum loss rate of comparable products. The specific disclosure template will be developed by a task force (TF) with industry participation in May–June.
In addition, a separate TF will be operated to improve insurance policy terms and product brochures across the board. The Financial Supervisory Service plans to operate a TF composed of an advisory group of consumers and civic organizations and an industry working group to address weakened communication caused by difficult terminology and excessive information.