The government rolled out Wednesday a set of long-term plans to help South Korean financial companies expand their overseas footholds, as part of a broader move to boost growth in the financial industry.

The Financial Services Commission (FSC), the country's top financial regulator, will allow local banks to acquire a financial holding company based overseas so that the lender can expand investment in a foreign country.

Under the envisioned plan, the FSC will lower the required stake threshold for a financial holding company, by which it must own a 50 percent stake in its overseas subsidiary.

The regulator will let a local financial holding firm be able to extend credit to its overseas unit with less collateral, the FSC said.

Banks will be given new opportunities to expand their business portfolios to other areas such as investment advisory services, the regulator added. So far, banks' foreign units have been permitted to only operate in certain financial sectors.

The FSC's move came as the local financial industry has been striving to find fresh sources of profit to tide over falling earnings stemming from the central bank's low-rate policy and a slowing economy.

Banking groups saw their earnings more than halve in the first half of this year from a year earlier on squeezed profit margins, although they have fared far better in the second half. Their overseas units also posted a 14.5 percent on-year fall in net income in the same period.

South Korean banking groups have been active in tapping into other countries for overseas expansion but few have had success in settling down and generating a stable profit as they faced a double whammy of having to comply with both sides of regulations here and abroad.

Under the "the Financial Vision," the regulator plans to finalize amending related provisions and laws in order to bring such eased measures into practice by the first half of 2014.

The regulator noted that this is a blueprint to fuel growth in the financial market in the long term and more detailed plans will follow in the next few years.

The FSC is also looking into giving financial firms and local businesses a joint opportunity to tap into overseas markets together as part of the growth plan, the regulator added. (Yonhap News)