현행 금융감독기구 체제의 문제점과 개편 방향

Abstract

Due to insolvency of several mutual savings banks in early 2011 in Korea, an issue of reforming the current financial supervisory authority system has been raised because it was disclosed that such insolvency had been partly attributed to an inefficient financial supervision and monitoring by the Financial Supervisory Service ("FSS"), a financial supervision and examination body. The reformative measures suggested by the special task force sponsored by the Prime Minister Office, consisting of relevant government officers and other specialists, have not been sufficient to tackle the current problems and to deal with the basic and fundamental reforms. This issue is expected to be in the spotlight again next year when a new administration will be launched. Thus, this article intends to analyze the current financial regulator system and recommend some desirable reformative measures thereof, in order to provide useful guidelines in such discussion of reforming the current financial supervisory authority system. First, this article suggests that the current system of consolidating the financial policy function and the financial regulatory policy function, which are being conducted by the Financial Services Commission ("FSC"), an financial decision-making government agency, needs to be separated so that the financial policy function should be transferred to the government, the Ministry of Strategy and Finance ("MOSF"), and the financial regulatory policy function must be conducted by an independent financial regulator. Second, the consolidated independent non-government financial regulator, which conducts financial regulatory policy function as well as financial institution examination function, should be established, rather than the government regulatory agency, in that this non-governmental regulator will definitely operate more efficiently in terms of procuring the independence, neutrality and specialization of financial regulation. Third, considering that the FSS has powers in diverse areas even including the fields of investigation of unfair trading in the securities and derivatives market and accounting audit as well as the regulation and examination of financial institutions, which leads to inefficient operation of the FSS due to abuse of such strong powers and diversification of concentration, this article suggests that the authority of supervising the capital market and the accounting audit need to be separated from the FSS, and the new agency for that jurisdiction should be established. Fourth, a new financial dispute settlement agency needs to be established, separating from the FSS, in order to enhance the protection of complaining financial consumers, because the current dispute settlement system conducted by the FSS is not evaluated to operate efficiently in terms of specialization and fairness. Finally, this article suggests launching a new system of efficient financial information sharing among the financial regulatory related institutions, such as the Bank of Korea, the Korea Deposit Insurance Corporation, the MOSF, the FSC and the FSS, by creating a new legal-based 'financial information sharing council,' which consists of such regulatory institutions or agencies.