<Anchor> This is a
friendly economic time. Today (12th), I will be with reporter Kim Hye-min. If you look at the articles on loans these days, there are too many household loans in Korea. There are a lot of articles like this, but in October, the government is offering a service that makes it easy to change to an alternative product that can pay a little cheaper interest?
<Reporter> In the
low interest rate era, there are many people who have taken out a loan to invest or buy a house. The household loan market is worth 1,700 trillion won.
Now, even if you want to switch to a loan with a lower interest rate, you will have to sign up for several banking apps or go to a bank branch and look up the terms of the loan to find out the interest rate.
And if you make a lot of loan inquiries within a short period of time, non-face-to-face loans are sometimes restricted. So, the government is preparing to launch a loan comparison platform in October.
It is a platform that allows customers to simply switch to a low-cost loan product through a mobile phone app. For consumers, it is possible to find the lowest interest rate quickly and easily, just like finding the cheapest hotel or flight ticket.
It may also lead to competition for interest rate cuts among financial institutions. If implemented, it is actually a very innovative system for consumers.
<Anchor> That's
right. I think it would be a really good system once implemented. But what if the central banks are against it?
<Reporter>
First, I need to tell you about the business model of this service. Banks pass information on loan products to fintech companies such as Toss and Kakao Pay.
Fintech companies provide customers with a service that allows them to compare these loan products. Customers can see this and choose the cheapest loan product.
In this process, banks have to provide fees to fintech companies, but commercial banks are reluctant to participate, saying there is a risk of being dependent on the platform.
If fintechs raise fees, commercial banks will be forced to be helpless.
In the end, commercial banks will establish a separate loan interest rate comparison system. Even with such talk, concerns are being raised that a half service will be launched.
It would be convenient and convenient for customers to be able to compare everything in one place. Now that's a difficult situation.
<Anchor> In the
end, this fee is now holding the ankle. Did you say that you recently had a meeting with the chairman of the financial holding company on this issue?
<Reporter>
The five major financial holding companies gathered at this meeting. I proposed to Financial Services Commission Chairman Eun Seong-soo to limit the platform service target to medium-interest loans.
Medium-interest loans are loans for people with a credit score of less than 50%. It is also a product that banks rarely handle.
Private mid-rate loans account for only 8.3% of the total credit loans. If this happens, it will deviate significantly from the original purpose of making it convenient for consumers.
So, it is known that the government is continuing its initial plan as scheduled. As I said earlier, it is October, so there are less than two months left.
Financial authorities are also considering ways to link the banking system after launching the platform first.
<Anchor>
Even when reporter Kim introduced this service for the first time today, I had high expectations, saying, “There is a very good service.
<Reporter>
Actually, everyone's position is very different. It is a difficult situation to coordinate. Each industry is claiming that it is for the benefit of consumers.
Fintech companies are claiming that "because they have already operated a loan comparison service, they can provide a much more convenient service to consumers."
The banking sector counters that "the fee to be paid to fintech only raises interest rates, and an independent interest rate comparison system is more helpful in lowering interest rates."
However, their view is negative. This is because the profits they have already made to consumers are very large. In particular, in the first half of this year, domestic banks earned 22.1 trillion won in interest income.
This is an increase of 1.7 trillion won from the first half of last year, mostly due to interest on loans. Experts point out that we need to get out of the bowl fight between industries and compete fairly for consumers.