금융소비자와 독립투자자문업：영국의 사례와 국내 시장에의 함의

초록

For the several years in the past, we have seen big, intense legal feuds between financial institutions and their clients as in the exotic option lawsuits (the KIKO lawsuits) between commercial banks and their corporate clients in Korea or in the lawsuits between Goldman Sachs and their investors in the US. As for Korea, we believe that some legal actions must be taken as soon as possible to protect individual financial consumers from these financial woes as they are now even vulnerable to potential conflicts from WRAP accounts, in which financial institutions can exercise much more discretion than in general mutual funds. In fact, decisions about which mutual funds or which WRAP accounts to buy should not be made in a routine manner；rather they should be made in consultation with professional advisors. We claim that IFAs, or independent financial advisors, are an viable option for this purpose. In this paper, we examine IFAs of the UK in terms of their origin, changes, and current status as the UK is the only developed economy where IFA's have been in active practice for the benefits of individual financial consumers. We also provide theoretical and practical implications of IFAs on how to protect financial consumers from possible financial woes in conflicts with ultra-powerful big financial institutions in Korea.

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