South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), the country’s financial regulator, issued a consumer alert on the 21st covering four commonly overlooked bank-loan issues. Borrowers may lose salary-transfer discounts unless salary details are registered correctly or transfer memos are labeled with terms such as salary, wage, monthly pay or bonus. The FSS also compared bullet, equal principal and interest, and equal principal repayment methods; explained that loss of benefit of time can follow specified delinquency thresholds; and warned that rates on variable-rate loans can change differently from market rates when loans mature and are renewed. Variable rates are calculated by adding a borrower-specific spread to a base rate such as COFIX (Korean bank funding benchmark) or financial bonds. The regulator urged consumers to check preferential-rate conditions, repayment structures and the effects of delinquency or credit deterioration before signing or extending loans.