To implement the principle of maintaining transparency of examination procedures set out in the "Principles for Effective Financial Examination," the Financial Examination Bureau of the FSC has announced its 2024 financial examination focuses to help financial institutions develop an early understanding of the FSC's key focal points in its supervisory work and financial examinations, as well as establish a concept of ethical business management. Developing this understanding will hopefully enable financial institutions to improve their self-regulation and contribute to their conduct of sound operations.
The FSC's 2024 financial examination focuses have been developed with reference to: (1) the recent development of domestic and international political and economic conditions; (2) external stakeholders' concerns; (3) the key financial regulations and supervisory focuses issued by the FSC in 2023; (4) the key supervisory expectations of the three sector bureaus, and (5) matters that must be scrutinized and identified by the FEB in 2023 examinations. The FSC selected a total of 96 examination focuses for different sectors of the financial industry.
The FSC has listed "corporate governance," "fraud prevention," "financial consumer protection (including personal data protection / safeguards for the interests of the disabled and elderly customers / control of the sales practices of wealth management specialists)," "risk management of real estate lending business," "information and communication security (including the cybersecurity of cloud service providers)" and "virtual asset service providers" as especially important fields of 2024 financial examination focuses. The main revised contents of the 2024 financial examination focuses are described as follows:
1. The External Stakeholders' Concerns:
(1) In order to strengthen the implementation of fraud prevention, the FSC has added "strengthening account opening review procedures," "the management of high-risk automated businesses such as internet-only banks and ATMs" and "strengthening of employee education and awareness programs" as new financial examination focuses for four different financial sectors (domestic banks, credit cooperatives, securities firms, securities investment trust companies) respectively.
(2) The FSC has added "Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs)" as a sector under scrutiny and money laundering-related examination items for VASPs to its financial examination procedures.
2. The FSC's Supervisory Focuses: To strengthen financial consumer protection, the FSC has added "whether wealth management specialists sell products that haven't been approved by the FSC," and "provision of personal data by credit card issuers to third parties" as audit focuses for domestic banks, and has added "use of automated tools to provide securities investment consulting services (robo-advisor services)" as new financial examination focuses for domestic banks and securities investment trust companies. In addition, to enhance the management of information and communication security, the FSC has added "information and communication security system and supply chain risk management" as new financial examination focuses for credit cooperatives as well as life and non-life insurance companies.

3. New Examination Items in Each Sector of the Financial Industry: These mainly include the control mechanisms for foreign investment caps, wealth management mechanisms and operations for high-asset customers, periodic inspections of cross-border outsourcing (e.g. information security and risk management measures for business outsourced to cloud service providers), the interest-rate pricing of commercial paper guaranteed and underwritten by a financial institution, as well as implementation of the review and adjustment of insurance product premiums.    
By issuing the 2024 financial examination focuses, the FSC hopes to help external stakeholders better understand examination priorities and to promote the sound operations of financial institutions.

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