국제금융규제와 금융소비자 보호

The global financial crisis of 2008 has highlighted the interrelation of financial consumer protection policies with financial stability and prudential regulation. Since then, various international institutions have promoted the integration of financial consumer protection policies into national regulatory and supervisory frameworks following the crisis. Global agenda setters such as the G20 and the Financial Stability Board (FSB) have called on international bodies to stipulated financial consumer protection principles. Top international organizations such as UNCTAD, the World Bank and the OECD have found common grounds in financial consumer protection policy. Finally, organizations with more specific mandates related to financial consumer protection such as the FinCoNet(organization of financial consumer protection authorities), CGAP (focused on financial inclusion for the poor), and OECD/INFE (focused on financial education) also work in this policy area. Collectively, these international organizations have emerged as the ʻnew international network for financial consumer protectionʼ (Network for FCP) which have succeeded in ʻinternationalization of financial consumer protectionʼ within the global financial system. These organizations have produced a vast amount of international ʻsoft lawsʼ in the form of guidelines, high level principles, good practices, guidance, technical and diagnostic reports – effectively creating an international financial regulation (IFR) system for consumer protection. The paper finds that IFR for consumer protection has its limitations in the following ways. First, IFR for consumer protection is based primarily on an already unstable framework of legally non-binding ʻʻsoft lawʼʼ of IFR. Second, due to the nature of consumer protection being intertwined with economic, social and cultural characteristics of individual nations, IFR for consumer protection will either maintain a high level of generalization (lacking meaningful substance) or remain as a low-level information sharing exercise between nations, which renders IFR for consumer protection ʻsofter than soft law.ʼ Third, IFR for consumer protection lacks implementation and enforcement mechanisms that existed (albeit in a weaker form) for pre-crisis soft law created by ISIs. Despite these limitations, however, IFR for consumer protection has succeeded in influencing legislators and policymakers on financial consumer protection policy in South Korea. The global financial crisis provided the impetus for the formation of the Network for FCP; however, for the Network to survive the diminishing global attention on financial consumer protection policy as the memory of the past crisis fades, policy makers should recognize that financial consumer protection is not an incidental or auxiliary goal to financial stability. It is an independent goal that requires sustained global attention, especially as the digital economy has blurred the boundaries between finance and non-finance and between nations.Consumer law itself has been internationalized; cross border e-commerce requires a system of consumer protection for cross- border retail finance; financial inclusion and sustainable finance are areas where nations, rich and poor alike, are searching for common solutions and require global cooperation. For these reasons, the Network for FCP will find fruitful ground for sustained global attention.