The Financial Supervisory Service has asked commercial banks to prevent customers with overdue payments from becoming credit delinquents via a pre-workout program.

A pre-workout program is a debt rescheduling method, under which banks reduce heavy payment burdens on individuals and corporate customers, who suffer from cash flow problems.

Key methods include rollover of payment dues and lower interest.

Banks have run a pre-workout program worth about 10.3 trillion won ($9.5 billion) for about 150,000 potential credit delinquents in 2012, the Financial Supervisory Service said Thursday.

According to FSS data, KB Kookmin Bank and Shinhan Bank were most active in carrying out the pre-workout program in 2012, covering the largest amount of debt redemption, while Korean branches of international banks ― Citibank and Standard Charted Bank ― were at the bottom of the FSS’ pre-workout performance chart.

Out of multiple kinds of debt, the 2012 house loan debts took up most of the redemption plan, comprising about 9.4 billion won out of the entire 10.3 trillion won pre-workout program. The program took care of about 3 percent of the nation’s entire house loan debt, which totals about 316.9 trillion won.

“For hard-workers, the pre-workout program will reduce the payment pressure of their household debt to a considerable degree,” an FSS official said.

By Chung Joo-won (joowonc@heraldcorp.com)