The Financial Supervisory Service to Hold Disciplinary Hearing on Woori Bank's Unauthorized Password Change

[Asia Economy Reporter Kwon Haeyoung] The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) will bring the case of unauthorized password changes on dormant accounts by Woori Bank employees to the disciplinary committee. This is expected to happen as early as March.

According to the financial sector on the 9th, the FSS plans to submit the corrective measures following the IT sector inspection of Woori Bank's management status evaluation conducted in October-November 2018 to the disciplinary committee.

An FSS official stated, "We plan to bring the unauthorized password changes and system failure incidents at Woori Bank to the disciplinary committee as soon as possible," adding, "It was originally scheduled to be brought to the disciplinary committee in the second half of last year, but the timing was delayed due to the overseas interest rate-linked derivative-linked fund (DLF) incident."

Some employees at certain Woori Bank branches unauthorizedly changed the passwords of customers' internet and mobile banking dormant accounts in July 2018. Some employees exploited the fact that reactivating dormant accounts through password changes would count as new customer acquisition performance. Woori Bank reportedly detected this internally and reported it to the FSS before the management status evaluation. Such misconduct carries significant risks of violating the Personal Information Protection Act and the Electronic Financial Transactions Act.

With the FSS planning to bring Woori Bank to the disciplinary committee over the unauthorized password change case following the DLF incident, tensions between the FSS and Woori Bank are escalating. Sohn Tae-seung, Chairman of Woori Financial Group (also serving as Woori Bank President), received a final 'reprimand' at the DLF disciplinary hearing at the end of last month, making it impossible for him to be reappointed after his term expires in March. However, he plans to challenge the reappointment through injunctions to suspend the disciplinary effects and administrative lawsuits, intensifying the conflict with the FSS.

As the FSS signals additional sanctions over the unauthorized password change case, the burden on Woori Bank has increased. Some analysts suggest that the FSS, having delayed the disciplinary hearing for over a year, is now applying pressure on Woori Bank by announcing additional sanctions at a sensitive time, effectively punishing the bank for 'insolence.'

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.