[Asia Economy Reporter Oh Hyung-gil] A suggestion has been made that the scope of regulations on marketing services that compare insurance premiums online needs to be clarified.
Yang Seung-hyun, a research fellow at the Korea Insurance Research Institute, stated on the 9th in the report "EU Online Insurance Sales Regulation" that "The European Union (EU), where insurance sales through comparison sites have long been developed, has had extensive discussions at the individual member state level on whether internet-based insurance marketing falls under regulated insurance sales activities and the criteria for such judgments."
The UK's Financial Conduct Authority monitored the status of price comparison sites and published guidelines containing judgment criteria in 2011. It considered that various cases, such as providing links to insurance companies or insurance sellers that allow customers to conclude insurance contracts through price comparison sites or actively comparing conditions, could be subject to regulation.
To resolve regulatory ambiguities regarding the scope of insurance solicitation regulations for online insurance marketing, the EU explicitly stated in the "Insurance Distribution Directive" implemented in 2018 that providing insurance product information or price comparisons via the internet constitutes "insurance sales." The directive clarified that the definition of "insurance sales" may include information provision or operation of comparison sites using media such as the internet.
Insurance sales include cases where customers can directly or indirectly conclude insurance contracts through media such as websites, acts of providing information on one or more insurance products according to the categories selected by customers, or acts of aggregating insurance product rankings such as prices, product comparisons, and premium discounts.
Research fellow Yang said, "With the implementation of the Insurance Distribution Directive, EU countries such as the UK and Germany are understood to be in the process of incorporating the principles and regulations of the directive, including the definition of insurance sales, into their domestic laws. Within the EU, this can be seen as establishing unified standards for regulating online insurance marketing sales. However, it is necessary to observe future developments regarding how online insurance marketing activities will be specifically judged and regulated under these standards."
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