최근 전자금융의 발전과 주요 이슈 = Recent Development of Electronic Finance and Major Issues for Further Development

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In Korea, the development of electronic finance(e-finance, hereafter) is unique phenomenon depending on fast development of information technology. The e-finance has reshaped financial services in their contents as well as diversities. Recently most of payments services are electronically processed using paperless instruments. Banks are adopting electronic technology most actively among financial institutions. Of course, security companies and insurance companies are also applying the technology to serve paperless stock trading and insurance applications. However, the scope of services that banks try to apply the new technology is much more widespread than other institutions. The e-finance has been recognized to improve the efficiency of financial services by decreasing the search and transaction costs finally resulting in the decrease of prices of financial services and economies of scope and scale. However, on the other hand, e-finance has also contributed in increasing the unsafety of financial services because of its paperless and faceless properties. Since the properties create asymmetric information problems, moral hazard seems to be inevitable in some sense. Recently enacted 「Electronic Financial Services Act」on April 6, 2006 is intended to stipulate the eligibility of participants into e-finance services and to suggest a rule of liability for financial accidents in e-finance. It is obviously believed that the act will contribute to enhance the safety of the e-finance. However, we need to remember that since strict liability rule is adopted for individual users, the rule may create some incentive to moral hazard problem of individuals. Altogether, even though the act sets a rule of liability, it does not stipulate legal standard of care of precaution that should be properly kept by e-finance services providers. These moral hazard problem and legal standard of care must be taken into considerations for further development of safety of the e-finance. The one that we should point out lastly is that e-finance is heavily dependent on non-financial institutions that hold information technologies. As a result, those non-financial institutions are trying to provide their own e-finance services as well as to technically support financial institutions. This participations of non-financial institutions are regarded as a potential factor to create additional unsafety problem in e-finance. It is readily noticed that e-finance has been contributing the development of financial services and creating huge utility for both e-finance service demanders and providers. However, it should be also noted that to achieve further development of e-finance, moral hazard and legal standard of good care as well as additional safety problem created by non-financial institutions should be appropriately handled.