Vice Chairman Kim Soyoung of the Financial Services Commission held a media briefing on February 26 and announced a set of measures intended to prevent mis-selling of highly complex financial investment products. The FSC and the FSS prepared the measures to bring about improvements to the sales practices of financial investment products at banks, to make sure that consumer protection principles are effectively observed by financial companies, and to help establish internal control mechanisms designed to prevent mis-selling and strengthen regulatory oversight. In the aftermath of large-scale losses incurred to investors regarding the sales of Hong Kong index-linked ELS products by domestic financial companies, the financial authorities have held a series of meetings with related experts and industry groups to come up with specific measures, which include allowing banks to sell ELS products only at certain qualified branches that are equipped with adequate consumer protection mechanisms and requiring a physical separation of counters between those handling the sale of ELS products and those handling ordinary deposit-taking and lending functions.