Samsung Life Insurance Office Building
Samsung Life Insurance won an appeal in a joint lawsuit over non-immediate pension payment. The judgment of the first trial, which raised the hands of the subscribers, was reversed.
On the 23rd, the Civil Division of the Seoul High Court ruled 12-2 (Presiding Judge Kwon Soon-hyung) against the plaintiff after breaking the first trial, which ruled in favor of the plaintiff, in an appeal trial against Samsung Life Insurance for unpaid pension payments filed by 57 subscribers.
A direct annuity is a product that receives monthly insurance money in the form of an annuity from one month after the subscriber deposits a lump sum. The plaintiffs are subscribers of the ‘maturity inheritance type’, who receive a pension for a fixed period of time and receive a repayment of the principal when maturity is reached.
Samsung Life Insurance has paid the pension after deducting a portion of the net insurance premium paid by the subscribers of the legacy-like direct annuity (amount paid by insurance premium less business expenses) from the amount applied with a rate public interest. In the name of raising funds for maturity repayments, a certain amount was withdrawn.
However, subscribers filed a complaint with the financial authorities in 2017, saying that part of the amount was not deducted in the terms and conditions, and that they had not heard any explanation from the insurance company. The Dispute Resolution Committee of the Financial Supervisory Service decided to pay less insurance money to insurance companies, and the Financial Supervisory Service recommended that insurance companies pay insurance money to the remaining subscribers. However, when insurance companies such as Samsung Life rejected him, he started a lawsuit.
The first trial raised the hands of the plaintiffs. The first trial court said, “It is necessary to explain and specifically state that a portion of the sum is being assigned to the plaintiffs, so that it can be seen that the duty to explain and detail has been fulfilled.” It was ruled that a total of 590 million in insurance money should be paid to these plaintiffs.
However, on this day, the 2nd trial court raised the hand of Samsung Life. It was deemed that Samsung Life Insurance appeared to have explained matters relating to the calculation of the pension amount in sufficient detail for the plaintiffs to decide whether to complete insurance. The court also said, “The expression that the public interest rate is applied does not create an obligation for Samsung Life Insurance to pay the full amount of the public interest rate to its subscribers as an annuity.” .
The amount in dispute in this legal case is about 600 million won, but if other insurance companies are included, the dispute about not paying a pension immediately is known to reach up to 1 trillion won. Confusion is expected to continue until the Supreme Court makes a decision as each court makes a different ruling in various legal cases regarding the direct pension.
