Citizens Unaware of Financial Services Commission's Implemented Policies

[Asia Economy Reporter Song Hwajeong] It has been revealed that public awareness of financial policies implemented by the Financial Services Commission (FSC) is not very high.

According to the '2022 Policy Promotion Activity Effectiveness Survey Report' submitted by the FSC to the National Assembly audit on the 7th, when asked, "Considering major policies such as virtual assets, open banking, fintech, 햇살론 (Haetsal Loan), the reduction of the maximum interest rate, card point cash conversion, financial consumers' hidden rights recovery, and policy-type New Deal policies, to what extent do you think you know about the policies implemented by the FSC?" only 23% responded that they "know," which was lower than the 33.1% who answered "do not know."

Looking at the awareness levels of major financial policies, the positive response rate (somewhat know + well know) for open banking was the highest at 70.1%. Awareness of the card point cash conversion service followed with a positive response rate of 54.4%. Excluding open banking and card point cash conversion services, there were no major financial policies that more than half of respondents were aware of. In particular, the negative response rates (do not know at all + somewhat do not know) for establishing order in virtual asset transactions and policy-type New Deal funds were over half. 53.9% responded that they did not know about establishing order in virtual asset transactions, and 57.1% did not know about policy-type New Deal funds. Surprisingly, only 27.7% said they knew about financial consumers' hidden rights recovery, which is closely related to financial consumers, while 37.6% said they did not know. The reduction of the maximum interest rate also had a low awareness rate of 26.2%, with 43.7% responding that they did not know.

Regarding fintech, which is considered a major issue in the financial sector recently, only 32% responded that they knew about it. Awareness of fintech was higher among people in their 20s and white-collar workers at 39.0% and 39.5%, respectively, but among those aged 60 and over, 42% responded that they did not know, indicating lower awareness of fintech among the elderly. On the other hand, awareness of 햇살론 (Haetsal Loan) tended to increase with age. In particular, more than half of those aged 60 and above were aware of 햇살론. By occupation, awareness was highest among the self-employed group at 51.4%.

The most effective channels for promoting financial policies were internet portal sites (70.9%), TV and newspaper articles (63.5%), and YouTube (46.2%), in that order. In contrast, awareness through online channels and websites of government agencies and public institutions was low at 9.9%, indicating the need to utilize various channels beyond websites for financial policy promotion.

However, awareness of financial policies has shown some improvement due to expanded financial education and diversification of channels. Last year, the response rate of those who knew about major FSC policies was 30.2%, which was more than twice lower than the 68.8% who did not know, but this gap has narrowed significantly this year.

An FSC official stated, "We are continuously making promotional efforts using various channels to raise awareness of financial policies."

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