Bank Interest Cashback 1.5 Trillion Won... Yoon Urges "Efforts to Ensure Benefits Return to Consumers"

Follow-up Measures Review Meeting After the Minsheng Discussion Forum

As part of the financial support measures for the public, the banking sector refunded a total of 1.5 trillion won in interest (cashback) to approximately 1.88 million individual business owners. President Yoon Suk-yeol urged, “I hope the banking sector will play a significant role in enhancing the competitiveness of the financial industry and ensuring that the benefits reach financial consumers.”

[Image source=Yonhap News]

According to the financial sector on the 5th, President Yoon attended the ‘Follow-up Measures Review Meeting on the Public Livelihood Discussion’ held jointly by related ministries at the Presidential Office in Yongsan-gu, Seoul, the previous day, and stated, “To ease the burden on small business owners, the financial sector and the government have together implemented interest refunds and refinancing loans totaling 2.3 trillion won.”

According to the Office for Government Policy Coordination, individual banks in the banking sector have raised their own funds and have been refunding a total of 1.5 trillion won in interest to about 1.88 million individual business owners since February 5.

Additionally, small and medium financial sectors such as savings banks and mutual finance have also started executing interest refunds amounting to 300 billion won for approximately 420,000 small business owners since the 29th of last month, supported by the financial backing of the Small and Medium Venture Business Startup and Promotion Fund. President Yoon expressed his gratitude to the bank executives who worked hard to implement this win-win program.

President Yoon also praised the expansion of the loan refinancing service, which had previously been available only for unsecured loans, to include mortgage loans and jeonse (key money) loans.

Earlier, the government decided in January to apply the loan refinancing service to mortgage and jeonse loans as well. As of the end of last month, 18,000 borrowers have used mortgage refinancing, with loan amounts totaling 3.3 trillion won. The average interest rate reduction achieved through refinancing was 1.52 percentage points (p), saving about 2.8 million won in interest per person.

Regarding this, President Yoon commented, “In the past, banks were consolidated to enhance international competitiveness, resulting in an oligopoly market structure, which inevitably caused significant harm and inconvenience to financial consumers. Loan refinancing has promoted competition in interest rates and loan conditions, naturally leading to lower interest rates and creating a very positive outcome where interest income has been transferred from the financial sector to the people.”

The government plans to continue expanding the refinancing service. On the 1st, apartment balance loans were included as eligible for refinancing, and mortgage loans for residential officetels and villas will also be permitted. The refinancing period and service operation hours will be continuously improved to better suit public convenience.

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