Unauthorized Password Change... Financial Supervisory Service Imposes 6 Billion KRW Fine on Woori Bank

'Caution' for Related Employees
No Institutional Sanctions Imposed

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Ki Ha-young] The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) is reported to have imposed a fine of approximately 6 billion KRW on Woori Bank in connection with the 2018 incident where Woori Bank employees unauthorizedly changed the passwords of dormant accounts.

On the 16th, the FSS held a disciplinary review committee meeting and, after discussing the corrective measures based on the IT (Information Technology) sector inspection results from the Woori Bank management evaluation conducted in October-November 2018, resolved to impose the fine. The fine will be finalized after approval by the Financial Services Commission.

About 300 Woori Bank employees unauthorizedly changed the temporary passwords of smart banking inactive customer accounts from January to August 2018, activating these accounts. They exploited the fact that accounts previously unused by customers would be counted as new customer acquisitions once activated by password registration. The FSS estimates that approximately 40,000 cases of unauthorized password use occurred across 200 branches nationwide.

Employees and executives received disciplinary actions such as warnings. Since Woori Bank had already received a severe 'institutional warning' penalty for other issues pointed out in the same 2018 inspection, no additional institutional sanctions were imposed in this disciplinary review.

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