According to Pulse by Maeil Business News Korea,

South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) Vice Chairman Jeong Eun-bo met with the heads of foreign financial institutions’ Korean branches on Wednesday in Seoul and promised to make efforts to improve the local financial environment, making it friendlier to international financial firms to do business in the country.

Jeong, during the meeting with the directors of overseas financial institutions, expressed his concerns over the trend that some of the overseas financial companies are closing down their branches or downsizing their sales team in Korea.

The Korean government will review the current financial system to look for improvement areas by comparing against the “global standards” of financial industry, said Jeong. But he also added that he cannot overlook the impacts such as change of business strategy, weaker profit forecast, and stronger global financial regulations on a foreign financial institution’s decision to withdraw its business from the country.

The FSC will have working-level discussions to have state’s regulatory reforms result in actual benefits such as lower expenses at foreign financial firms in Korea, said Jeong as he shared his plan of setting up a special team of experts from the state, legal sector, and financial industry to study the ways to make the local financial system friendlier for foreign financial companies to do business in Korea.

Jeong and 20 Korean branch directors of foreign financial companies including Bank of America Merrill Lynch also shared talks on the recent trend in international financial market and measures to improve communication with local financial authorities during the meeting.

By Chung Seok-woo

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Source: Pulse by Maeil Business News Korea (Jul. 20, 2016)