영국보험법상 기업보험에서 고지의무제도 개혁논의의 동향 - 법률위원회의 Joint Consultation Paper를 중심으로

On June 2012, U.K. Law Commissions published an ‘A Joint Consultation Paper’ considering the issues relating to a business policyholder’s duty to give pre-contract information to an insurer as set out in sections 18 to 20 of the Marine Insurance Act and considers the law of warranties for businesses and consumers. Under current law, a business policyholder has a duty to disclose every material circumstance it knows about the risk it wants to insure. Failure to do so entitles the insurer to avoid the contract, which means the insurer may treat it as if it did not exist and refuse all claims. The duty is unclear and sometimes poorly understood, while the consequence of breach is too harsh. There is evidence that the duty does not work well in practice. Proposals of the law commission aim to clarify how policyholders are expected to comply with the duty when presenting a risk to insurers and to encourage insurers to assist them in that task. The law commission also proposes fairer remedies for breach where the policyholder has not been dishonest. In Korea, the supreme court makes a distinction between the consumer insurance and the business insurance. However there is no clear standard to distinguish and many business managers do not know the law; and even if they are familiar with the Commercial code, they have little idea of how to meet the duty in practice. In this respect, the consultation paper of the UK law commission would be a good model to us, and controversial issues of the papers could be a good guidance because the main problems are similar.