신용평가업 규제의 현황과 문제점 그리고 개선방향

Abstract

A credit rating market in Korea has developed rapidly last 30 years. But only 10 years passed after the first regulation on credit rating agencies was enacted and also it was only 2 year ago when the Financial Service and Capital Market Act (“FSCMA”) started regulating this industry in earnest. In this reason, there is big discrepancy between reality of industry practice and ideality of regulation itself on credit rating market. However, recently there were audits and sanctions on 3 domestic credit rating agencies by regulatory authority originated by Dongyang Group Crisis in Korea. This audits and sanctions revealed not only growth of regulations on the industry but also some critical legal issues still left. The final goal of regulations on credit rating agencies is to adjust interest conflict from interested parties such as client companies, shareholders, investors and credit rating employees as well as to provide fair credit ratings to the market. For this purpose, it needs independence and objectivity of credit rating business. However, FSCMA doesn’t provide sufficient and concrete regulations while credit rating practice is covered by internal control directives by credit rating agency itself. Also, sanctions rendered by regulatory authority seemed not to have valid effect on the agency from future illegal activities. In this regard, we have to newly enact or implement some core regulations now covered by internal regulations to FSCMA and consider introducing of administrative fine for ways of sanctions. Foreign countries including the United States have tried to institute new and strict regulations on the credit rating market in the aftermath of the recent global financial crisis. These credit rating agency reforms of major countries would be good examples to us, but we cannot introduce or regulate as foreign countries do because our industry and legal environment are different. From this perspective, I reviewed current regulations on the credit rating agencies for aspects of independence, objectivity and sanctions of regulator and looked through some issues to make suggestions how to improve regulatory schemes in this article.