No. of financial service workers drops 40,000 over 3 years

By Lee Kyung-min

Korea lost more than 40,000 financial service jobs over the past three years, an inevitable outcome of the sector's strengthened online businesses, including non-face-to-face services, government data showed Sunday.

Data from the Financial Services Commission (FSC) and the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) showed that the financial services sector employed a total of 831,000 people jobs at the end of 2018, down 41,000 from 872,000 in 2015

They include 384,000 full-time workers at financial groups and their subsidiaries and low-paid 447,000 contract workers.

About 14,000 jobs were lost from banks, the most lucrative subsidiaries of financial groups, long considered one of the highest quality jobs.

As many as 15,000 jobs were slashed from insurance firms and 9,000 from card firms. Most of them were contract workers in charge of recruiting new customers.

Only the financial investment sector added 4,000 jobs due to an increase in the number of asset management companies following the government's deregulation to lower entry barriers.

There were 243 asset managers at the end of 2018, up from 93 in 2015. The number of their workers jumped to 8,234 in 2018, up from 5,259 in 2015.

The FSC said that traditional marketing workers losing jobs is fast becoming a reality around the world, adding that it will continue to seek deregulation to help create new jobs in the financial sectors.

It also plans to help financial firms expand their presence in Southeast Asian countries.