Preparation for the "bank agency service," which the financial authorities had vowed to begin piloting in the first half, appears to be making little progress. The bank agency service is a system that helps residents in areas without bank branches handle banking tasks at places like post offices. But banks and post offices have not even decided which products to handle during the pilot.
According to the financial sector on the 21st, the four major commercial banks (KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Hana, Woori) and Korea Post are holding regular working-level meetings to decide which products to handle in the pilot operation of the bank agency service. However, despite months of such meetings, they still have not decided on the products.
The bank agency service is a system in which a third party that is not a bank carries out banking tasks on behalf of a bank. It emerged to address the decline in financial access for vulnerable groups as banks reduced the number of branches in provincial areas. Countries such as Australia and Japan have conducted bank agency services through local post offices for 20 to 30 years, and the Yoon Suk-yeol administration benchmarked this and began procedures to introduce the system in July 2023.
The problem is that momentum is hard to build because the bank agency service is perceived as a "previous administration policy."
A ruling party official said, "Within the authorities, there are views such as, 'It is a previous administration policy, so let's resolve it quickly and move on,' and, 'It is a previous administration policy, so is there any need to push it actively?,'" adding, "The government is not ordering active progress either."
In March 2025, the Financial Services Commission announced, "We will designate the bank agency service as an innovative financial service in July this year and begin a pilot within the year." But the schedule slipped after President Lee Jae-myung took office three months later, and the designation as an innovative financial service did not come until late December last year. As a result, the start of the pilot was also delayed by half a year. An official at the Financial Services Commission (FSC) said, "We will push as quickly as possible so that we can start the pilot in the first half," but only two months remain until the end of the first half of this year.
Banks and post offices also are not showing an aggressive stance. A financial industry official said, "From a bank's perspective, it is true there is no compelling reason to actively prepare for the bank agency service. If we have post offices, which inevitably have lower understanding and proficiency in banking services, sell products and something goes wrong, the bank will have to bear greater responsibility," adding, "Within banks, there is a prevailing mood of 'Do we really have to do this?'"
The official also said, "Post offices have their own products and core duties, and there is a current of opinion asking where they would find the capacity to sell other agencies' products they don't even know well."
Meanwhile, the number of bank branches continues to decline. It fell about 20%, from 3,304 in 2020 to 2,685 in 2025. One out of every five bank branches closed over five years. The decline was particularly steep in regions with large elderly populations, such as Jeju (-26.3%), South Jeolla (-25%), South Gyeongsang (-22.3%), and North Gyeongsang (-20.9%).