신용평가 규제법제의 입법론적 과제

Abstract

Many point out that one of the primary causes of the global financial crisis was the failure of credit rating agencies to thoroughly assess the quality of structured products. Accordingly, legislative efforts were made in the US, the EU and Japan to step up regulation of credit rating agencies. They mainly targeted conflict of interest between credit rating agencies and issuers and the oligarchic structure of the credit rating market. Korea did not experience the same problems that the US and the EU faced as structured products are not very common in Korea. However, Korea also has its own share of problems. Governmentᐨled development of the industry resulted in excessive restrictions on market entry, which inevitably created an oligarchic market structure. There are also limitations in Korea’s conflict of interest prevention system that only relies on investment restrictions. This paper analyzes the problems and limitations of the recently revised Use and Protection of Credit Information Act from the legislative perspectives and compared the Act with related laws in other countries. It also proposes measures for improvement such as upgrading the current regulations, establishing a rational conflict of interest prevention framework, ensuring the effectiveness of the disclosure mechanism, relaxing entry restrictions, preventing abuse of the rating scale system, holding credit rating agencies legally responsible for their ratings and phasing out the duty imposed on issuers to receive credit assessment more than once and changing the current issuer-pay model. Apart from entry restrictions, it is fair to say that there is no other regulatory instruments than credit rating agencies’ own internal control systems. Internal controls are not enough to resolve the issue of conflict of interest stemming from the practice of issuers paying fees to credit rating agencies. The level of internal control should be enhanced with legal backing to adequately prevent rating shopping, conflict of interest and unfair activities. In addition, it would be reasonable to apply the Financial Investment Services & Capital Markets Act to credit rating agencies as well rather than having a separate Act governing credit rating agencies. Additionally, regulations such as entry restrictions, dual ratings should be relaxed to let market discipline do its job.