미국 회사임원배상책임보험의 새로운 유형 및 주요계약조건

The primary purpose of D&O liability insurance is to protect the individual directors and officers from personal financial loss arising from claims against them for alleged wrongful acts undertaken in their capacity as directors and officers. It has been developed since securities market fell down in 1929 in the United States. Especially, since July 2002 when the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was signed into law, the necessity of D&O liability insurance for private companies and not-for-profit companies has increased so much in the United States. The interests to the D&O liability insurance and its volume of sales has increased recently in Korea. However, it is difficult to say that D&O liability insurance has made satisfactory progress, because many CEOs do not realize the necessity of D&O liability insurance, policies' coverage is so narrow, and insurance companies do not sell D&O liability insurance policy or otherwise sell it very expensively to the small corporations which need this insurance so much. In addition, the severability clause of Korean D&O liability insurance policy is not so general as those of many countries advanced in the field of insurance industry. In order to solve these problems, Korean insurers should strengthen their promotion of D&O liability insurance policies and improve their D&O liability insurance systems from various angles. In this respect, American D&O liability insurance policies could be a good model and the developing process of academic theories and courts' precedents in the United States concerning D&O liability insurance could be referred to.