Kim So-young, vice chair of the Financial Services Commission (FSC), speaks during a meeting with major financial and tech companies in Seoul, Thursday. Yonhap

Korea will provide various forms of support to help local financial firms more actively use fast-advancing artificial intelligence (AI) technology in their businesses, a top financial regulator said Thursday.

In a meeting with major financial and tech companies in Seoul, Kim So-young, vice chair of the Financial Services Commission (FSC), said that high-quality data should be available to make AI technology more effective and earn consumers' trust in its application.

"Under the hyper-connected, hyper-convergence and big blur trends, it is a must to highly advance AI technology in order to effectively utilize big data," Kim said. "We will seek to remove factors that might hamper active use of AI by reflecting views in the fields."

In a related move, the FSC is pushing to set up the so-called financial AI data library that allows financial firms to use high-quality big data without worrying about infringing upon personal information.

AI technology and big data have been increasingly adopted in various areas of financial services but restrictions on the use of personal information have been cited as a major roadblock to advancing such application.

The FSC cited credit analysis, credit screening, roboadviser, chatbot services and fraud detection system as areas where AI technology has been actively adopted. (Yonhap)