Leaders of the financial community, the related cabinet ministers and 

legislators are gathered for the New Year’s reception hosted by Korea 

Federation of Banks and five other financial organizations on Jan. 

3 at Lotte Hotel in downtown Seoul. The participants included Deputy 

Prime Minister and Minister of Strategy and Finance Hyun Oh-seok, 

Vice Speaker of the National Assembly Park Byung-seok, Gov. Choi Soo-hyun 

of the Financial Supervisory Service, Gov. Kim Choong-soo of the Bank of 

Korea and FSC Chairman Shin Je-yoon, among others.(Photo:Courtesy of FSC)

The Korea Federation of Banks and five other financial organizations held a New Year’s for the Pan-Financial Community event at the Korea Federation of Banks building in Myeong-dong, downtown Seoul, on Jan. 3 in which some 150 key leaders in the financial community attended including government ministers, legislative leaders and key financial executives.

The gathering hosted by FSC Chairman Shin Je-yoon included Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Strategy and Finance Hyun Oh-seok; Rep. Park Byung-seok, the vice speaker of the National Assembly; Gov. Choi Soo-hyun of the Financial Supervisory Service; Gov. Kim Choong-soo of the Bank of Korea; and others.

Deputy Prime Minister Hyun said in his speech at the gathering that the financial firms should throw away old practices and set out to find measures to further upgrade the financial industry this year.

Chairman Shin in his New Year’s speech outlined the FSC’s major plans for this year with key objectives being measures to strengthen the financial competitive power with diverse changes in the financial market.

He said every financial firm should cope with changes in both domestic and global financial markets as speedily as possible and at the same time make diverse efforts to find new tasks.

Chairman Park Byung-won of the Korea Federation of Banks

“Our economy has entered the age of low growth with the workers getting old faced with the need for structural changes from the ground up as the age of securing economic growth with capital and labor has passed,” the FSC chairman said.

“The past financial practices cannot ensure continued growth for the financial industry, which is coping with new social and economic demands.

“The role of the financial industry should also change in tune with economic and social changes and be ready to assume new roles to help with economic activities.

“The FSC will see that the economically disadvantaged people get priority in securing loans from the financial firms this year with the financial firms reforming their systems for providing such loans to those people.

“The FSC will set up an overall watch unit to see that the tailor-made credit analysis system for those people by financial firms would be made up so that they can get more loans to be more economically independent,” the FSC chairman said.

“The FSC will also take actions to perk up the activities of venture capital through the launch of a technology evaluation system to ensure that financial firms provide more loans to creative venture capitalists this year so they can grow at least as much as the economy,” he said.

Chairman Shin also promised to launch a technology database for the overall control of technology information to boost the effectiveness of the common use of that information in the first half of this year.

“The FSC will also work to create various conditions so that a private credit evaluation organization would emerge that can provide tailor-made information to those who need it.

“The FSC will also help the growth of diverse competitive market players in the financial market with unique financial DNA in line with the reform of the financial roles.

“Limited deregulation of the financial industry to allow more competition, encourage more M&As, and boost dynamism of the capital market are some of the plans included in the new strategy by FSC this year,” Shin said. 

Shin said finding dynamic core future financial partners who will be the financial firms that are exclusively engaged in financial businesses and nurturing professional financial people is mandatory to spur the activity of venture capital and the Creative Economy. He said the likes of Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motor would emerge among the professional financial firms.