There is lots of criticism in Korea that our financial customers have been successfully
protected. For recent example, Korean financial customers have been suffered huge loss from
imperfect sales of KIKO, ELS or Mutual Savings banks’ subordinated bonds.
In the other side of these failures in appropriate protection of financial customers, there is
fundamental insufficiency both in the philosophy about the importance of protecting financial
customer and in the legal infrastructure including alternative dispute resolution. Based on the
costly experience, tentatively named Act on Financial Customer Protection is in process of
being enacted in the Korean Assembly for more efficient protective mechanism.
Moreover, along with the issue of reforming present financial supervisory system into
efficient one for stable financial system and better financial customer protection, there are
dispute about which system would be recommendable for Korea among present integrated one
and so-called twin-peaks one. Twin-peaks system means that there are two equally positioned
financial supervisors where prudential supervisor and business behaviour supervisor exist.
Asserters of the twin-peaks system say that this system is more efficient for better protection
of financial customers because it makes each supervisor focus on its own goal.
This paper casts doubt on the issue of whether twin-peaks system would be working
efficiently in Korea and suggests what we really need for this purpose instead of introducing
twin-peaks system. Furthermore, this paper also deals with the current issues of necessity of
independent agency for further improved protection of financial customers.