Under President Park Geun-hye’s commitment to improving the livelihood of ordinary citizens, the state financial regulator will launch a task force to crack down on irregular practices haunting financial consumers.

The task force, dubbed the Financial Consumer Protection Planning Team, is scheduled make its debut in the coming weeks, the Financial Services Commission said Wednesday.

“Over the next 12 months, the planning team will carry out special duties involving looking into the overall irregularities,” an FSC director general said. “Establishment of the team originally belongs to state policies of the incumbent administration.”

He also said the yearlong task force will be composed of “five regulatory officials from the FSC and one from the Fair Trade Commission.”

The team is poised to make inquiries into 10 major categories by conducting polls and interviewing financial consumers in coordination with other agencies.

A key target will likely be to investigate the propriety of the current level of service fees on consumers’ transactions charged by commercial banks or credit card firms.

Another significant target is the practice that banks pressure borrowers to purchase financial products, such as bancassurance and pension funds, in exchange for issuing loans.

The team is a separate entity from the consumer protection board, an executive unit of the Financial Supervisory Service.

By Kim Yon-se (kys@heraldcorp.com)