The Financial Supervisory Service continued its policy stance on consumer protection and inclusive finance. It called on the banking sector to completely rebuild the entire process from financial product design to sales from a "consumer protection" perspective.
The Financial Supervisory Service held the "2026 banking institutional sector financial supervision briefing" on the 9th with executives and employees of banks and bank holding companies and officials from the Korea Federation of Banks in attendance. At the briefing, Vice Governor Gwak Beom-jun of the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) emphasized, "In a rapidly changing bank management environment, we can turn crisis into opportunity only if we build a virtuous cycle in which a fair environment is created for financial consumers and banks and the public grow together."
The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) will first support a plan to reorganize the entire process of financial product design, review, and sales around consumer rights to strengthen consumer protection. In particular, it will strengthen monitoring of sales of complex, high-risk products and, during regular inspections, form a separate "financial consumer protection inspection team" to conduct multilayered reviews.
It will also strengthen governance and internal control, which have been pointed out as chronic problems in the banking sector. It plans to pursue institutional improvements to enhance the independence of boards of directors and the fairness and transparency of CEO appointments, and to confirm follow-up measures on shortcomings found in on-site inspections following the introduction of accountability structures.
Regarding inclusive finance, from this year a "comprehensive inclusive finance evaluation system" that holds banks socially accountable will be introduced. The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) will conduct comprehensive annual evaluations of each bank's inclusive finance implementation system and status, and share the results with boards of directors and others to ensure inclusive finance takes root as a management culture rather than a one-off event.
Through this, it aims to substantially ease the financial burden on small business owners and the self-employed. Specifically, it will expand eligibility for debt workout support through "Small Business 119PLUS" and promote the introduction of a refinancing service for bank loans to sole proprietors.
To improve financial accessibility for vulnerable groups, it will strengthen non-face-to-face channels and require effective alternatives when branches are closed. Regarding virtual assets, it will prepare supervisory measures in anticipation of legislation allowing the issuance of stablecoins and promote the domestic adoption of the Basel Committee's prudential regulations on crypto assets.
On the chronic issue of household loans, while inducing self-regulation by banks such as calculating the DSR (debt service ratio) for internal management purposes, it decided to continue expanding fixed-rate and amortizing mortgage loan products to ease borrowers' burdens.