According to Company A, a large non-life insurance company on the 4th, last year’s car insurance-related complaints were counted at 3077. This is an increase of 16.1% from the previous year (2650 cases) and 58.5% from 2017 (1941 cases) three years ago. Usually, there are many complaints about insurance with victims.
What is peculiar is that the number of complaints from people who have had a traffic accident has increased rapidly. The number of complaints for insurance claims by perpetrators from 16 in 2017 increased more than four times in three years to 75 last year. In terms of the number of cases, more complaints were filed by victims, but the rate of increase was faster for the perpetrators.
An official in the insurance industry explained, “As the number of cases requesting treatment expenses and settlement money for even minor accidents is increasing, complaints from perpetrators who are not victims of insurance accidents are rapidly increasing.”
The problem is that as such incidents accumulate, it is acting as a factor in raising the overall auto insurance premium. According to the Financial Services Commission, an additional 23,000 won in insurance premiums per contractor was paid due to excessive treatment related to auto insurance. Jeon Shik, a research fellow at the Insurance Research Institute, said, “The study revealed that victims tend to receive excessive treatment for the purpose of receiving treatment costs and settlement money in the future.”
For this reason, it is pointed out that victims of minor car accidents need to be diagnosed with a doctor in order to receive treatment for a certain period of time. The Financial Services Commission is also considering introducing a British system that mandates the issuance of medical certificates for all cervical sprains (damage to the muscle ligaments near the neck) and sets the duration of treatment.
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