Insurers Can Do More Biz Overseas

By Park Hyong-ki

Staff Reporter

The financial authorities will ease rules concerning overseas operations of insurance companies in an effort to encourage them to further expand abroad.

The Financial Services Commission (FSC) said it will only ask insurance firms' overseas subsidiaries to report to the regulatory body before offering investment management and advisory services to domestic and foreign institutional investors.

Currently, they need to get approval prior to providing such services to customers both at home and abroad. This has hindered insurance firms planning to set up units overseas as many had to go through administrative red tape.

Facing such problems, the FSC has decided to reduce the paper work when filing prior reports on investment services. ``We hope such deregulatory measures will help insurers go global in a greater number,'' said the FSC in a statement.

Also, the financial policymaking body will clearly indicate how long it will take to approve insurers' ownership of subsidiaries.

By rules and regulations, insurance firms are required to seek regulatory approval after acquiring a controlling stake in a company to make it their subsidiary. However, the regulator often did not give notice to insurers as to when they will be able to receive answers after regulatory filings. From now on, the FSC will state how many days it will take to review their findings and finalize its regulatory decision.

``This is part of efforts to increase predictability on the market and improve regulatory oversight of financial services companies,'' said the regulator.

In other news, employees, who gained on trading of their company stocks, do not need to give back their profits to the firm. Currently, listed-firms have the right to ask their executives, major shareholders and staff to return their six-months of gains when allegedly utilizing undisclosed information.

But the regulator excluded low-ranking staff as they are less likely to trade on insider information.

phk@koreatimes.co.kr