INTRODUCTION
As a way to resolve household debts, the Korean Financial Supervisory Authorities recently increased the strength of the regulations for national credit card firms. The financial authorities halted the expansion of asset sizes of credit card firms by restricting the criteria for credit card issuance to a credit rating level of 7 or greater by 2012 and by setting the upper limit of leverage for credit card firms to a maximum of six times by 2015. According to reports by the Korean Financial Supervisory Authorities, their card loan suppression policy and reduced (remittance) fees decreased the volume of credit card debt in the months ofJanuary until April by 35% compared with the volume of credit card debt in the same period of the previous year. Considering that domestic credit card firms usually procure the funds necessary for card loans and card sales through the issuance of credit card debt, the financing mechanisms of credit card firms seemed to be in poor condition.
According to a press release by the Credit Finance Association, the total domestic credit card approval history as of August 2012 was KRW41.7 trillion (about USD36.8 billion), indicating an 8% increase of the total at the same month a year ago. It was also the first time that the increase rate has stayed in the single digits since the October 2009 rate of 9.4%. In addition to the current global economic uncertainty due to the Eurozone crisis, the tightened regulations by the financial authorities curbed the business stability of domestic credit card firms.
Thus, the present study examines the factors needed for domestic credit card firms to maintain stable management activities and offers important suggestions to the credit card firms and financial authorities in setting up managerial goals and policies, respectively. In the next section, previous relevant studies are presented followed by an explanation of the data and the data analysis model used in the empirical analysis. Finally, the empirical analysis and the conclusion are presented.