SEOUL, Sept. 4 (Korea Bizwire) – An increasing number of South Korean banks are doing away with the country’s official identity verification process, which has long been criticized as ‘too complicated’ and ‘exhausting’, while being encouraged by financial authorities to do away with the excessive use of ActiveX, a software framework often slammed as ‘headache-inducing’. [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 30 (Korea Bizwire) — Banks in South Korea saw their financial health improve slightly in the second quarter of this year helped by modest gains in their profits, the financial regulator said Wednesday. The average capital adequacy ratio of 18 commercial and state-run banks stood at 15.37 percent as of end-June, up 0.23 [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 22 (Korea Bizwire) – The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) said Monday it has published a guidebook on local finance for English and Indonesian speakers so that they can use full and reliable services in South Korea. The Foreign Residents’ Guide to Personal Banking and Finance in Korea contains information on banking, currency exchange, [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 1 (Korea Bizwire) — A new report has revealed that American and British investors are the biggest traders of South Korean stocks, accounting for over 50 percent of all foreign stock buyers. Data released by the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) on Tuesday showed stocks traded in the South Korean market by foreign investors [...]
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 [...]