준법감시인제도의 조기정착을 위한 시론

In accordance with the amendments to the Banking Act and other laws relating to financial services in January 21, 2001, a new institution referred to as compliance officer was introduced along with the internal control system. As a consequence, banks, securities firms, insurance companies and other financial institutions must appoint a compliance officer. However, there still remains lots of misunderstanding and confusion on the real function of compliance officer as it is new in the Korean financial industry.Financial institutions, basically, regard the compliance officer as a cause of additional costs and regulatory burden for them. Among others, it is noted that there remains no clear jurisdiction distinction between the role of audit committee (or auditor) and that of compliance officer. However, it appears that most of the criticisms result from misunderstanding of the nature and function of the compliance officer. This Article aims at eliminating the confusion of the financial industry involving the role of the compliance officer. This Article is composed of four sections. Section I overviews the issues arising in the course of introduction and operation of the compliance officer system. Section II summarizes the theoretical background of the compliance officer system including its definition, function, and legal nature. In particular, the supervisory responsibility, which is deemed to be the primary cause of successful operation of the US compliance system. On top of the understanding of the nature of compliance, there also exist various factors which must be provided for an effective and efficient operation of the compliance program. Section III lists such factors. Section IV draws some conclusions.