Around 30 foreign financial institutions intend to join Korea's market

Dollars displayed at Hana Bank’s Counterfeit Notes Response Center in Jung District, central Seoul, on Oct. 6. [YONHAP]

Some 30 foreign financial institutions expressed their intention to register with Korea’s foreign exchange authorities for direct trading in the market, according to the Bank of Korea on Wednesday.

Eligible financial companies have been allowed to sign up for the trading of currency forwards, swaps and spots in the interbank currency market, following a set of announcements by the financial authorities early this year to ease regulations on the foreign exchange market to attract foreign investment.

Some 30 foreign financial institutions sought to register from Sept. 26 through Oct. 11.

They will be allowed to directly participate in the local currency market without a branch in Korea starting in January next year. The central bank will monitor the trading of the registered foreign institutions.

The foreign exchange authorities vowed to thoroughly monitor the market and the impacts caused by the new participants, in a bid to successfully settle the structural changes expected to raise the competitiveness of Korea’s market along with its economic size.

Korea also plans to extend the foreign exchange market's trading hours from the current six and a half hours, running from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., to 17 hours, operating from 9 a.m. through 2 a.m., starting from the second half of next year.

BY JIN MIN-JI [jin.minji@joongang.co.kr]