FSS Issues Institutional Warning to Woori Bank for Violating Large Cash Transaction Reporting Obligations

Multiple Large Cash Transactions Over 10 Million Won Not Reported
Partial Failure in Customer Verification for Large Cash Transactions
Institutional and Employee Cautionary Measures Issued

The Financial Supervisory Service announced on the 30th that it had issued an institutional warning to Woori Bank for failing to fulfill its obligation to report large cash transactions by customers and to verify one-time financial transactions.

According to the Financial Supervisory Service, between July 16, 2020, and September 27 of last year, Woori Bank failed to report 772 large cash transactions of 10 million won or more to the head of the Financial Intelligence Unit.

Under the Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information, financial institutions are required to report to the head of the Financial Intelligence Unit within 30 days if they pay or receive cash of 10 million won or more in a financial transaction. Woori Bank did not comply with this requirement.

During a similar period, Woori Bank also failed to fulfill its customer verification obligations for 237 one-time financial transactions involving payments of 10 million won or more. According to the same law, financial institutions must verify customer identification information when conducting one-time financial transactions of 10 million won or more.

The same law stipulates that when a financial institution enters into a contract with a customer for the purpose of initiating a financial transaction (such as opening a new account) or when conducting a one-time financial transaction, it must verify the customer's name, date of birth, resident registration number, address, and contact information. However, the Financial Supervisory Service pointed out that 19 branches of Woori Bank, including Branch A, failed to properly fulfill customer verification obligations for 20 new account openings or one-time financial transactions between September 22, 2022, and July 26, 2024, such as not requesting documents to verify the customer's address.

Woori Bank was also found to have inappropriately prepared and operated procedures and work guidelines related to customer verification for one-time financial transactions involving payments of 10 million won or more. The Anti-Money Laundering Office of the Financial Supervisory Service stated that it notified Woori Bank of the institutional warning on the 25th and issued cautionary measures to two employees.

The Financial Supervisory Service also recommended that Woori Bank rationally improve its operation of suspicious transaction reporting (STR) work. The agency diagnosed that some of Woori Bank's criteria for extracting suspicious transactions related to large cash transactions were insufficiently defined to fully achieve their intended purpose.

Furthermore, the Financial Supervisory Service explained that some of the reasons for excluding suspicious transaction reports were unrelated to the criteria for extracting suspicious transactions, confirming cases where suspicious transaction monitoring work was conducted unreasonably. The agency stated that it had delivered recommendations to Woori Bank on the 25th to improve its criteria for extracting suspicious transactions related to large cash split transactions and to strengthen employee training in this area.

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