Anna Jiwon Park has been covering the politics at The Korea Times since the summer of 2024, when she joined the press pool for the Office of the President in Korea. Prior to that, she spent about five years reporting extensively on financial markets, regulatory authorities and the financial industry. She joined The Korea Times in 2019 after spending eight years as a broadcast journalist at Arirang TV, Korea’s leading global broadcaster, covering politics, defense and culture.
FSS launches online portal to speed up licensing processes
The START portal / Screenshot from Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) website
By Anna J. Park
By Anna J. Park
The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) launched an online portal Monday that streamlines and guides the financial authorities' licensing and accreditation processes. The move aims to bring more transparency, clarification and speed to the process as one of the state-run watchdog agency's key policy goals for this year.
The website, named START Portal, is easily accessed from the menu of the FSS' official website. Applicants for the financial authorities' accreditation process can view a total of 177 related tasks at a glance on the site and apply for their intended procedure through it.
The 177 tasks are largely categorized into four sub-sections ― licensing, approval, registration and report. Applicants can also check on differentiated licensing procedures for banks, non-banks, investment and insurance firms. The site also offers detailed evaluation criteria, required documents and manuals for the licensing process.
Site users can save time figuring out the latest regulations, instructions and necessary contact information at the FSS to carry out licensing procedures.
In addition, those who wish to consult prior to applying for licensing can make reservations for consultations with individual licensing officers through the portal site without the need to contact the officers directly and book appointments. Once they apply for a consultation, they are assigned a waiting number and can check the processing status in real time.
The FSS is the first among financial supervisory institutions of major countries, including the U.S., U.K., Germany and Japan, to have introduced such an online portal for the licensing process.
“The FSS will continue making efforts to increase the convenience of applicants with regard to their licensing registration processes,” an official from the FSS said.