FSS holds briefing on best practices for complaint and dispute handling

Survey of 77 firms finds complaint staff make up just 2.1% of workforce; only 4 firms have lawyers on complaint teams

Financial Supervisory Service Governor Lee Chan-jin speaks at a meeting with asset management company CEOs held at the Korea Financial Investment Association in Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul, on Oct. 13. [Yonhap]
Financial Supervisory Service Governor Lee Chan-jin speaks at a meeting with asset management company CEOs held at the Korea Financial Investment Association in Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul, on Oct. 13. [Yonhap]

Financial Supervisory Service Governor Lee Chan-jin said Wednesday that financial firms have long treated complaint and dispute handling as a cost rather than essential infrastructure, leaving them with inadequate staffing, organizational capacity and customer consultation systems.

Lee made the remarks in opening comments at a briefing on best practices for financial company complaint and dispute operations, held at the FSS headquarters in Yeouido, Seoul. About 300 people attended, including chief consumer officers and human resources and organizational executives from 150 banks, securities firms, insurers, credit card companies, savings banks and financial holding companies, as well as representatives from industry associations.

"As financial products have grown more sophisticated, the range of harm and inconvenience experienced by financial consumers has been steadily increasing," Lee said. "Listening carefully to those grievances and resolving them is the starting point for building trust in finance." Lee also noted that the government views complaints as a "treasure trove" of public sentiment and has been emphasizing active listening and resolution.

Lee identified as a key problem the tendency for complaints that financial firms could resolve themselves to end up being filed with the FSS instead. "A significant number of complaints and disputes that could be resolved directly by financial companies are being submitted to the FSS due to poor accessibility through call centers and other channels," Lee said. "This can make it difficult for financial regulators to respond in a timely manner to consumers seeking relief on matters that require in-depth review." In fact, 74.8 percent of complaints received by the FSS last year were either subject to voluntary mediation (58.3 percent) or involved staff rudeness or simple inquiries (16.5 percent). The FSS processed 78,462 complaints and disputes in the first half of this year, up 32.0 percent from 59,463 in the same period last year.

Lee outlined three requests. The first was to improve accessibility for complaints and consultations. "Please check wait times so that consumers do not have to wait long to reach a call center, ensure sufficient call center capacity, and carefully review whether in-person and online complaint procedures are unnecessarily cumbersome," Lee said.

The second request was to strengthen in-house complaint and dispute handling capabilities — specifically, deploying qualified staff in line with consumer demand and ensuring sufficient independence within consumer protection units to allow fair complaint resolution. The third was to embed a consumer-first culture. "By meaningfully incorporating complaint and dispute metrics into employee KPIs, please work to ensure that management's commitment to putting customers first takes root as a genuine consumer protection culture across the entire organization," Lee said.

An FSS review of 77 financial firms conducted at the end of last year found that complaint-handling staff accounted for just 2.1 percent of total employees, falling to 0.7 percent when workers aged 55 and older were excluded. Only four firms, or 5.2 percent, had lawyers assigned to their complaint and dispute units, and 40 firms, or 51.9 percent, incorporated complaint and dispute metrics into their CEO's KPIs.

In response, the FSS incorporated into its best-practices guidelines — developed together with the industry — measures covering: the authority of chief consumer officers to make complaint-handling decisions; the placement of specialist staff such as lawyers and loss adjusters; the setting of call center wait-time targets of no more than five minutes; the placement of complaint windows on the front page of websites and apps; the meaningful incorporation of complaint metrics into CEO and executive KPIs; and the expansion of public disclosures covering the number of financial complaints filed, call center operations and the size of complaint-handling teams.

"Please give strong support to the complaint and dispute handlers on the front lines of consumer protection so they can take pride in their work," Lee said. "I hope the FSS and financial companies can together take one step closer to the hearts of consumers."


won@heraldcorp.com