채무면제·유예상품의 교훈을 통한 소비자신용보험 활용방안

Consumer Credit Insurance is one in which the insured are debtors while surety insurance or credit insurance has creditors as the insured. Therefore consumer credit insurance has three advantages like protection of debtors, risk management of financial companies, and promotion of social welfare. The insurance may control the systemic risk in financial industry because it can erase the debt thoroughly through insurance hedging from the beginning of the chain. Particularly in South Korea, there are controversies about inequalities from inheriting wealth, predatory lending and money collection, or the like. The advantages of debt relief from consumer credit insurance can counter balance those inequalities. However, even though South Korea has a long history of consumer credit insurance, the insurance has not been vitalized thank to financial companiesʼ hesitation and financial consumerʼs negative perception. So we need to invigorate the insurance advantages through imposition of duty on creditor companies to notify debtors of the right to be exempted from the debt through insurance coverage. Also we need to offer financial companies revenue model like compulsory group consumer credit insurance. There is another barrier to stop activating the insurance, which is the legal restriction to prohibit financial companies from providing both insurance and loan simultaneously. We need to make an exception in the case of consumer credit insurance because it is to protect debtors, not creditors. There are other things to consider trying to vitalize the insurance. We need to note it has a nature that its advantages easily disappear by financial companiesʼ greedy. We have already observed many cases of failures to take advantages of the insurance in many countries. Especially South Korea has recently seen the failure of Debt Cancellation or Debt Suspension Contract. From the lessons of the failure, we need to prudently give shape to the regulating regime.