The Financial Services Commission ordered the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) to prepare measures to sincerely comply with the National Assembly's request for information related to operational expenses. The FSS only publicly discloses a portion of the operational expense details and is also refusing to submit requested materials to the National Assembly.
According to financial authorities on the 18th, the Financial Services Commission recently convened the Budget and Accounts Subcommittee to review the FSS's budget from the previous year. The Financial Services Commission noted in its audit comments on the budget that the FSS should report the measures regarding the sincere implementation of the National Assembly's data requests at the 2026 budget subcommittee.
The Financial Services Commission highlighted that the FSS needs to increase the transparency of its operational expenditures, noting that currently, only some details are disclosed.
The FSS has faced criticism for not disclosing operational expense details despite requests for public information from the National Assembly. The FSS annually publishes only the purpose of operational expenditures (such as meetings, work consultations, and congratulatory or condolence expenses), the monthly number of occurrences, and the monthly amounts. It is difficult to ascertain which officials the FSS staff met for public expenditures.
During last year's National Assembly's inspection, FSS Governor Lee Bok-hyeon rejected the request for details on operational expenditures, stating, "The number of materials per individual item is very extensive, making it difficult to submit them." The FSS has refused to disclose the details of operational expenditures, citing concerns that supervisory and inspection information might leak if made public.
Governor Lee used approximately 30 million won for operational expenditures in 2023. Including the operational expenditures provided to key positions within the FSS, it is estimated that around 1 billion won is spent annually on operational expenditures.
Other public institutions, such as the Financial Services Commission, the Fair Trade Commission, and the Korea Deposit Insurance Corporation, disclose operational expenditures broken down by date of use, amounts, location (merchant names), purpose, and number of people.
The FSS's budget is 85% covered by supervisory contributions paid by financial firms. Supervisory contributions are a type of fee received by the FSS in exchange for providing supervisory services to financial companies. This year, the FSS planned to collect 330.8 billion won in supervisory contributions. Given that the institution is operated through fees collected from financial firms, there are calls within the financial sector for operational expenditures to be executed transparently. According to the results of a regular audit disclosed by the Board of Audit and Inspection in April 2023, one employee was found to have misused an operational expenditure card allowing their spouse to use it.
An FSS official stated, "We are disclosing operational expenditures in accordance with the standards set by the Financial Services Commission, similar to other public financial corporations," adding, "We are currently discussing strengthening the disclosure measures and revising related standards with the Financial Services Commission during this settlement of account subcommittee."