EU의 복합금융그룹 감독에 대한 제도적 고찰

Institutional Reflections on the Supervision of the Financial Conglomerates in EU -Focusing on Insurance Business-

Today, the world financial market is interested in strengthening competitiveness with regard to the three important issues: conglomeration, universalization, globalization. One of the methods for them is to extend the market area through the holding company and appears as a form of the financial conglomerate. The financial conglomerate means to provide products and services from different areas of the financial market within a conglomerate. The main business of this group is financial and its member companies should operate their business through more than two business areas of different kinds among bank, Investment and insurance. The types of financial conglomerates are generally classified into parent and subsidiary company, horizontal integration and holding company. In Europe, the regulation as a level of supervision is estimated very strict, though the regulation of entry into the integrated financial business market is modest. The financial conglomerates have developed focused on insurance and assume a form of the multi-level holding company which operates every kind of financial business such as bank, insurance and capital management within the company having a number of subsidiary companies of multi-level under many holding companies. In case of the risk arising within the financial conglomerate, it is so infectious to other kinds of financial business within the same group as to be diffused throughout the market. Thus, in order to prevent this risk, it is very important to strengthen the supervision of subsidiary companies within the financial conglomerates and capital adequacy. The core of the supervision of financial conglomerates lies in controlling risk preventively and securing capital adequacy. The European supervision of financial conglomerates is based on the Directives on the financial conglomerates established by the European Economic and Financial Committee which define the capital adequacy and risk concentration of the entire conglomerate, internal transactions, requirements for the management and control procedures for internal risk, etc. In the aspects of Organization, in principle, the member countries are responsible for the supervision of financial conglomerates on the principles of national supervision, one of the basic principles of the EU financial market. However, The European Financial Conglomerates Committee(EFCC) has been established to be in charge of the supervision for the liberalization of capital movement within EU and the financial conglomerates having their subsidiary companies within all over the EU market. Today, it seems that the appearance of financial conglomerates would be more accelerated by the trends of financial products: diversification and combination. Korea is not exceptional where the extensive permission and supervision of financial conglomerates have been recently discussed very much. This paper is expected to be used as a preliminary material for the regulation of financial conglomerates in the future.