South Korea’s top financial regulator on Thursday called for the government to ease restrictions banning conglomerates from becoming leading shareholders of local banks, saying that “idle capital” should be allowed to flow into the financial industry.

Yoon Jeung-hyun, the head of the Financial Supervisory Commission, called the restrictions “silly” in terms of efficient allocation of capital, adding pressure on the government to permit the country’s powerful chaebol to invest in the financial sector amid growing concerns over the increasing influence of foreign capital in Asia’s third-largest economy.