Kyobo Life announced Friday that the "composite underwriting rider" embedded in its "Kyobo K-Customized Health Insurance (non-dividend, composite underwriting type)" has been granted a six-month exclusive use right by the Korea Life Insurance Association.
An exclusive use right is a form of patent the Korea Life Insurance Association grants to original financial products. It gives the developing company a monopoly on sales for a set period, barring other insurers from offering similar products and protecting the innovator's commercial interests.
The composite underwriting rider splits coverage within a single product at the rider level: healthy areas of risk are assessed under standard underwriting, while areas that cannot qualify for standard underwriting are handled under simplified underwriting — all in a single enrollment. The structure lowers unnecessary premium surcharges and closes gaps in coverage.
The association's new-product review committee recognized the rider's originality and utility, noting that it breaks down the long-standing binary divide between standard insurance and simplified-underwriting insurance for people with pre-existing conditions, and is the first in the industry to implement a composite underwriting structure.
The committee particularly credited the product with overcoming a key limitation of existing insurance for people with pre-existing conditions, which had applied the relatively expensive simplified-underwriting rate uniformly across the main contract and all riders. Under the new design, coverage items linked to a customer's medical history are insured through simplified underwriting without exclusions, while coverage items unrelated to the customer's condition are enrolled at standard rates without surcharges — reducing premiums for customers while eliminating blind spots in their coverage.
The convenience of the enrollment process also drew favorable marks. Kyobo Life introduced a "one-stop disclosure process" that integrates standard and simplified underwriting into a single flow, allowing customers to confirm the underwriting result for each rider simultaneously with just one application, rather than filing multiple times.
In addition, the system verifies eligibility for standard underwriting at the plan-design stage, preventing customers from incurring unnecessary costs they might otherwise not have noticed.
"We will continue to be a steadfast lifelong partner protecting our customers' healthy lives through differentiated products and services," a Kyobo Life official said.
Kyobo Life has also secured a series of exclusive use rights since November — including riders covering cardiopulmonary resuscitation and defibrillation, and a rider for specific uterine conditions under its women's health insurance — further demonstrating its product development capabilities.
psj@heraldcorp.com
