[Reporter’s Notebook] One Year Under Lee Chanjin: Has the "Consumer Protection DNA" Taken Root?

Call for “Consumer Protection DNA”
Prevention Must Go Beyond Pre-Sale Measures
Reducing Incidents, Complaints, and Disputes Is Essential
Integrated Management with Relevant Agencies Needed for Real Results

Lee Chanjin, Governor of the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), has marked his first anniversary in office. Amid organizational restructuring controversies surrounding the FSS, he is credited with stabilizing the organization by preventing the separation of the Financial Consumer Protection Department and successfully postponing the reclassification of the FSS as a public institution. This explains the generally positive assessment of Governor Lee within the FSS.

However, how well financial consumers have actually been protected is another matter. From the very beginning of his tenure, Governor Lee's core focus was to instill a “consumer protection DNA” throughout the entire financial sector. Now, after one year, it is time to move beyond slogans and systems and evaluate him based on whether actual consumer damage has been meaningfully reduced.

The FSS will hold the “Financial Consumer Protection Performance Report to the Public” on September 17. However, there are concerns that this event may not differ significantly from the anniversary press release issued last month. It may simply end up listing consumer protection systems and policies without substantial new content.

Governor Lee has focused on strengthening preventive mechanisms at the sales stage, such as product design and explanation obligations. At the product design stage, high-risk products are subject to prior screening, and insurance companies are directed to diligently fulfill their duty to explain contract terms and inform policyholders of their obligations.

Despite these efforts, tangible progress in reducing consumer damage has not been evident. According to the FSS, there were 42,462 dispute-related complaints last year, with an acceptance rate of 54.7%. While the acceptance rate improved by 7.4 percentage points from the previous year, it still hovers just above half. Both the total number of complaints and the number of dispute-related complaints reached record highs.

There is a need for measures that actually reduce incidents and disputes. In areas such as insurance fraud and illegal private lending, where information is scattered across multiple organizations, simply emphasizing prevention by financial firms has limitations. An integrated response is needed—one that connects data with investigative agencies and relevant departments to block criminal activity at an earlier stage.

The FSS has laid the groundwork for some collaborative efforts. In the case of insurance fraud, the FSS established a cooperative system with the National Health Insurance Service to cross-check health insurance benefit data, and it is known that the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service and the National Health Insurance Service are also actively working to exchange data. What matters now is to establish a continuous framework for cooperation, rather than sporadic or one-off efforts. The FSS must move beyond merely supervising financial institutions and take on a coordinating role that links all relevant agencies.

The success or failure of consumer protection policies will not be determined by how many new systems have been introduced, but rather by how effectively complaints, disputes, the number of incidents, and the total amount of consumer losses have been reduced through cooperation with relevant organizations. Only then will the “consumer protection DNA” that Governor Lee emphasizes become visible as real-world outcomes.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.