A Research on the Changes on Life Insurance Contract in ICT Convergence - focused on electronic consent of the insured

Ⅰ. Introduction Under rapidly developing ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) environment, payment and settlement system,1) electronic banking and financial transaction etc. improved to be executed mainly by electronic way. Electronic methods help the transaction to be accomplished more easily and speedily and safely than before. Meanwhile, some issues2) has been focussed on by scholars and judicial cases since such transactions was executed not conventionally but electronically. After a process of transaction which is implemented unarguably in paper world is substituted by electronic way, the validity of the process executed electronically can be arguable, because a few process are interpreted to be processed only in paper way. Whether the process executed electronically is valid or not depends on the legal nature and purpose of the require-ments for the transaction and the possibility of the purpose being accom-plished in electronic way. And the interests of parties in the conversion of the process from paper to electronic way need to be considered while de-termining the validity of electronic process. Life insurance is a very popular commercial transaction and recently is recognized as one of financial investment devices.3) Contrary to the prop-erty insurance, Korean insurance law doesn't require any insurable interest for life insurance contract, which is different from common law system. The written consent of the insured is necessary for entering into life in-surance contract and it plays a role to prevent the wager transaction on life of individuals and to keep the value of life of the insured from un-welcome possibility of homicide like the role of the insurable interest in common law system. While someone enters into insurance contract on the life of another in electronic way, can the consent of another be expressed in electronic way instead of written consent required by insurance act? It is not clear as Korean insurance law has no specific articles on this issue and the require-ment of written consent has been interpreted as mandatory based on pub-lic policy to keep the value of life and prevent the wagering. And the in-surance contract on the life of another without the written consent of the insured has been declared null and void so far. This paper focuses on the issue of the validity of electronic consent of the insured and whether it is required to amend the insurance law to inter-pret insurance contract on the life of another executed only with electronic consent of insured as valid. For this purpose, this paper would compare the requirements of insurance on life of another in Korea following the civil law system and US following the common law system and then con-sider the possibility of substituting the written consent of the insured for electronic consent only by interpretation or amending insurance law and in latter case how to amend it.