금융회사에 대한 제재로서의 확약서ㆍ양해각서 활성화방안

Korean Financial Services Commission (“FSC”) released several reformation plans on financial sectors including those on inspection and sanctions. They indicated a move towards financial sanctions on corporate entities. It also includes more frequent utilization of agreement and commitment letter as a way to secure voluntary compliance of financial institutions under specific circumstances. The author argues it should be expanded to be applicable to all forms of misconducts of financial institutions. In a more serious violation of financial regulations, they should be penalized by a civil fine as well as a deferred publishment agreement such as a DPA under US and UK jurisprudence as it seems to be most effective way to find misconducts of complicated and multi-jurisdictional financial institutions. Furthermore, one time penality is not sufficient to ensure full compliance of financial institutions which have a criminal record of misconducts. More specifically, the agreement with financial institutions should be more refined to cover the major terms to be provided such as statement of facts, compliance program enhancement, obligations of financial institutions such as full cooperation, complete disclosure, immediate disclosure of new evidence, and non-contradiction, and waivers of the regulator such as suspension of further sanctions. Thereby, Korean financial institutions can improve the relative importance of compliance program in their operations and help the FSC to develop law enforcement system based on self-reporting.