South Korea expands MyData services to small businesses and AI agents

South Korea’s Financial Services Commission has announced a plan to expand MyData services to include individual business owners and small business owners. The initiative aims to evolve MyData from simple information viewing to an active ‘My AI Agent’ ecosystem. These AI agents will be capable of performing practical financial tasks on behalf of consumers, such as requesting interest rate reductions, applying for policy funds, and managing debt adjustments.

To support this, the commission plans to introduce a ‘personal credit information joint use system,’ allowing financial holding companies and their affiliates to share data for specific purposes. This is intended to facilitate more sophisticated AI-based financial services and alternative credit scoring.

However, industry experts note significant regulatory hurdles. While the new plan allows for data sharing, current laws restrict the use of shared information among affiliates to ‘internal management purposes.’ This prevents companies from using combined data for direct marketing, product recommendations, or cross-selling without explicit customer consent. These restrictions were largely implemented following a major credit card data leak in 2014 to prevent the indiscriminate use of personal information.