Annual Disclosure of Refund Amounts and Balances of Dormant Assets by Financial Companies

Disclosure to Cover All Financial Sectors Including Banks, Securities, and Insurance Starting March Next Year
Balances of Long-term Inactive Assets to Be Released Together
Mandatory In-house Management Targets, Refund Activities, and Internal Reporting for Financial Companies

The refund amount of dormant assets, the balance of dormant assets, and the balance of long-term inactive assets by financial company will be released annually through the official websites of each financial industry association and central federation.

On September 28, the Financial Services Commission and the Financial Supervisory Service announced that they had established the “Plan to Strengthen and Improve the Dormant Asset Management System,” which contains such measures.

Previously, the financial authorities had provided services and conducted campaigns to allow consumers to search for and claim their financial assets. However, criticism has continued that a significant amount of assets still remain unreturned to consumers. In fact, dormant financial assets held by financial companies (such as deposits and insurance payments whose statutory expiration period has passed) amount to 1.5 trillion won.

Accordingly, the financial authorities have decided to release the refund amount of dormant assets, the balance of dormant assets, and the balance of long-term inactive assets for each financial company annually via the websites of the relevant industry associations and federations. Not only dormant assets, but also balances for assets that have had no transactions for an extended period will be disclosed together.

All financial sectors—including banks, securities, insurance, savings banks, and mutual finance—plan to disclosure the previous year’s performance by individual financial companies by the end of March every year. In addition, the “Standard for Financial Consumer Protection” and other guidelines for each industry association will be revised to reflect standards such as: ▲setting management targets ▲activities to promote refunds ▲internal reporting, etc.

Financial companies will be required to set and operate their own management targets to prevent the occurrence of dormant assets and to reduce their scale. However, indicators that can be controlled by the financial companies—such as refund rates, refund amounts, rate of increase or decrease in dormant assets, number of campaigns, and whether notification and refund procedures have been improved during the year—will be autonomously set, considering the specific characteristics of each sector and company.

Along with this, the standard will expressly require that financial companies carry out activities to promote the refund of dormant assets—such as campaigns—and report the results of their management work to the internal control committee responsible for financial consumer protection. This is to strengthen oversight and management at the executive level regarding dormant asset management.

The Financial Services Commission plans to finalize the disclosure plan for dormant asset refund performance and amendments to the relevant standards after consultation with each financial industry association, followed by the subsequent implementation process.

Each financial industry association plans to revise the standard for financial consumer protection and other relevant regulations by the end of this year to reflect these improvements, and to establish new website menus and systems to disclose refund performance.

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