Yujin Securities, No.1 Securities Firm in Consumer Protection... "Digitalization of Sales Process Effective"

From 'Poor' in 2018 to 'Excellent' in 2019: A Complete Transformation

[Asia Economy Reporter Minji Lee] Eugene Investment & Securities has been identified as the securities firm best protecting financial consumers among domestic securities companies. On the 7th, Eugene Investment & Securities announced that, amid expectations for the Financial Supervisory Service's mystery shopping (undercover inspection) evaluation of securities firms this month, it received the highest rating among 17 securities firms last year with a comprehensive score of 97.8 points.

The mystery shopping evaluation refers to the Financial Supervisory Service's practice since 2009 of having investigators from specialized agencies pose as customers purchasing financial investment products to assess the consumer protection status of securities firms. It comprehensively checks whether financial companies understand customers' investment tendencies and recommend suitable products, and whether they fulfill the obligation to provide proper explanations about risk factors such as principal loss.

In the 2018 evaluation, Eugene Investment & Securities was the only one among 15 evaluated securities firms to receive the lowest 'Poor' rating, but within a year, it transformed to the highest 'Excellent' rating.

The vertical rise in rating was mainly due to reforms in the financial product sales process. After receiving the poor evaluation result at the end of 2018, under the leadership of CEO Changsoo Yoo, Eugene Investment & Securities undertook a major overhaul of the financial product sales process to enhance consumer protection.

First, to eliminate factors causing incomplete sales due to errors or omissions in the sales procedure during consultations, they computerized the process. The computerized standard sales process was structured into 10 steps, allowing essential explanations and documents that must be provided to or collected from customers to be printed on the spot. Last year, the process was applied only to funds and ELS, but from this year, it has been expanded to bonds, commercial papers (CP), electronic short-term bonds, contingent convertible bonds, and overseas bonds. Through this, customers must complete all these steps to purchase products, enabling them to receive recommendations suited to their investment tendencies, financial situation, and risk tolerance.

Additionally, attention was expanded to training employees to effectively use the computerized standard sales process. Videos were posted on the company intranet, and each branch was assigned the task of conducting role-play consultations using the computerized system twice a year.

Finally, to assess the effectiveness of these process improvements and employee training, the company also conducted its own mystery shopping evaluations. The frequency was increased from twice to four times annually, linking results to performance evaluations, and supplementary training was provided to branches and employees with unsatisfactory results.

Kim Guhwan, head of the Consumer Protection Team at Eugene Investment & Securities, said, “To prevent incomplete sales and strengthen consumer protection, it was important that the sales process operate as an integrated company system rather than relying solely on individual employee capabilities. We focused on computerizing the standard sales process and guided sales staff to naturally internalize it, which seems to have been effective.”

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