SEOUL, Jul. 12 (Korea Bizwire) — Financial authorities will give permits to fintech firms to provide international money transfer services for small funds, officials said Wednesday, in a move that significantly reduces commission fees on moving money. About 40 fintech firms are expected to launch international money transfer services from Aug. 15, according to officials [...]
SEOUL, April 14 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s online shopping site operators continued to report operating losses last year from a year earlier, as more market competition hurt their profitability, regulatory data showed Friday. Coupang Inc. suffered a combined operating loss of 560 billion won (US$490.8 million) in the January-December period of 2016 compared with [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 23 (Korea Bizwire) – It has been almost three months since the Supreme Court of Korea ruled that insurance companies must pay the families of suicide victims, but a recent report from the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), submitted to lawmaker Min Byung-doo (Minjoo Party of Korea), revealed that insurance companies have yet to [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 4 (Korea Bizwire) – Insurance companies have been caught recommending expensive health insurance plans intended for the elderly and people with chronic diseases to otherwise healthy customers. These expensive insurance plans are referred to as Simple Evaluation Insurance (SEI), and were designed to meet demand from the rising number of elderly Koreans and [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 19 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s top financial regulator said Sunday that it will allow local insurance firms to decide premiums for their insurance policies on their own in a bid to promote price competition in the long-slumped market. The Financial Services Commission (FSC) said it will remove guidelines for setting insurance premiums from the beginning of 2016. Since 2000, the financial authorities have required local insurers to set aside a certain amount of money to make [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 22 (Korea Bizwire) – Large general agencies (GAs) are expanding their sales power, employing more than 100,000 financial consultants and surpassing 10 percent market share. However, their cases of incomplete sales of insurance went up slightly. The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) announced that as large GAs with more than 500 financial consultants are increasing [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 26 (Korea Bizwire) – Korean financial regulators will set up guidelines allowing brokerage firms in Korea, including branches of foreign companies, to sell overseas financial products like foreign bonds to local institutional investors together with foreign partners. The Financial Supervisory Service announced on August 25 that it had prepared such guidelines, and will make [...]
“North Korea’s attack should have little impact on the country’s financial sector, although downside risks associated with the United States raising its key interest rates and uncertainties coming out of China need to be checked. The government is ready to respond proactively to all uncertainties.” “There was a strengthening of the U.S. dollar compared with [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 17 (Korea Bizwire) – In the first half of the year, insurance companies in Korea made net profits of 4.5 trillion won, powered by a surge in one-time profits such as sales of equities. According to the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) on August 16, the combined net income of 39 insurance firms in Korea [...]
Seoul, July 9 (Korea Bizwire) — There will be no need to fill out personal information such as names, addresses or phone numbers when applying for a savings account or investment account at a financial institution one is already dealing with, starting as early as the end of the year. Repeated signatures on documents will [...]