Organizations such as Korea Exchange and The Korea Securities Finance Corporation (KSFC) that are under Financial Services Commission (FSC) are causing a controversy as they are excluded from having their data opened despite a recent trend of open data by South Korean Government to convert its economy into data economy.
Financial authorities, who opened payment network of commercial banks and even standardized how information was provided by private financial companies, are actually staying out of major organizations that possess important information of financial market.
As a result, there has been a blind spot where data opening by public divisions and private divisions is carried out differently.
According to industries, FSC is standardizing financial data that is managed individually by Financial Supervisory Services (FSS), Korea Deposit Insurance Corporation (KDIC), Korea Credit Guarantee Fund (KODIT), Korea Development Bank (KDB), Korea Securities Depository (KSD), Industrial Bank of Korea (IBK), Korea Asset Management Corporation (KAMCO), and Korea Housing Finance Corporation.
Its goal is to expand provided range of open API (Application Programming Interface) on official data from FSS’ DART (Data Analysis, Retrieval, and Transfer System) and to provide various information from KSD, KODIT, and KDB and IBK in a form of an open API.
Opening of financial information is a follow-up measure of ‘public data innovative strategy’ that is pushed by all government departments and was voted by Open Data Strategy Council in February of 2018. Open Data Strategy Council ordered central administrative agencies and public agencies under local government groups to standardize public data as open API.
FSC is also pushing commercial banks and private companies to open their data as well. While it is working on opening financial payment network as a form of an open API and establishing joint payment system (open banking), it established a consultative group to discuss about preparing standardized API to introduce MyData industry to financial fields. This consultative group has workers from relevant agencies, financial agencies, and FinTech and data industries participating and they discuss about range and method for opening information through API.
As FSC is working on private sector and public sector separately, capital market-related agencies such as Korea Exchange and KSFC are currently not under either private sector or public sector. Even though Korea Exchange and KSFC are basically monopolizing business within capital market and possess various important information, they are not designated as public agencies.
Although they need to be included into a separate consultative group by categorizing them as public agencies, they are also excluded from consultative groups. “We are already providing much information as a file form through our homepage.” said Korea Exchange while not being aware of FSC’s plan to have data provided in an API form.
Situation on FSS, which has decided to provide information from DART in an API form starting from this year, is not much different from that of Korea Exchange and KSFC. Although it needs to provide management information that complies to the level followed by public agencies, it is not obligated to open public data.
Conflict between FSS and FinTech companies on whether balance of short stock selling should be made public or not is a prime example. Even though public data conflict adjustment committee under Ministry of the Interior and Safety ruled that balance of short stock selling does not correspond to private information, FSS did not accept the decision made by the committee. This is a side-affect that occurred as FSC has been pushing policies on open data from public sector and private sector separately.
“While KSD and KOSCOM that provide similar information are already providing various information in an API form, Korea Exchange and KSFC are providing their information in a file form and are not having any discussion about providing their information in an API form.” said a representative for a FinTech company. “Although we understand about FSS being hesitant on opening sensitive information, having no discussion about opening data at all does not make any sense.”
“We did not realize that Korea Exchange was excluded from opening public data as it was cleared as a public agency.” said a representative for FSC. “We are going to make sure that there will be discussions taking place by private consultative groups regarding this issue.”
Staff Reporter Ryu, Geunil | ryuryu@etnews.com