Benefits to U.S. Seen in Financial Trade Pact : Commerce: WTO deal, which did not include U.S., will equalize foreign firms’ access to financial service markets.

The industrialized world--minus the United States--reached agreement Wednesday to liberalize international trade in financial services, a move that U.S. banking, insurance and securities interests viewed with a mixture of hope and skepticism.

The deal, expected to be finalized in Geneva on Friday, should make it easier for financial service firms to enter foreign markets. And though the United States is not a party to the agreement, American firms still stand to benefit.

The United States backed out of the negotiations at the fledgling World Trade Organization last month, contending that certain developing countries--India, Brazil and Indonesia among them--had offered so little in the way of market-opening initiatives that an accord was all but worthless.

After the U.S. pullout, the European Union fought to keep the process going anyway and on Wednesday persuaded straggling Japan and Korea to join the pact.

Under the deal, signatories will agree to give equal access to their financial service markets to firms from all countries. What the pact does not do--and what the United States had sought--is grant foreign firms the same access to a market that domestic firms in that market enjoy.

“It may be marginally beneficial, but it’s certainly not earthshaking,” said Tom Farmer, chief counsel to the Bankers Assn. for Foreign Trade, a Washington-based trade group.

Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin said in a brief statement Wednesday that the agreement “will provide a basis for continued work to open financial services markets on a multilateral basis.”

He said the United States will participate in negotiations toward further market opening until December, 1997, when the deal struck Wednesday is set to expire.

The United States, in backing away, reserved its right to restrict access to U.S. markets by firms from countries that are closed to American firms.

Farmer said Europe had less at stake in the negotiations because its financial service firms are not as interested in the developing markets of Latin America and Asia as are their U.S. counterparts.

U.S. firms see rich potential markets for such products as mutual funds and insurance, but they have been discouraged by local protectionism, Farmer said.

Sir Leon Brittan, the European Union’s chief trade negotiator, hailed the agreement in a statement Wednesday.

“I believe the deal will help to unclog the financial arteries of the global market by providing cheaper, higher-quality capital for companies. . . . Consumers, too, will ultimately gain from better terms on which to save their money, insure themselves and their property or invest in the stock market,” Brittan said.

He said the deal will improve access for new entrants to foreign financial service markets and improve conditions for firms already operating abroad.

Gordon Cloney, president of the International Insurance Council, a U.S. trade group based in Washington, said that while the deal might not have produced as much liberalization as had been hoped, it should at least ensure that signatory countries don’t backpedal from the amount of access they currently grant foreign players.

“If you’re going to fly internationally, at least you’re assured of good weather for the next 2 1/2 years,” he said.

The Geneva negotiations are a follow-up to the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade talks concluded in December. When those talks produced no breakthroughs on financial services and certain other trade areas, the parties agreed to extend negotiations through June.

When the June 30 deadline arrived, the United States, frustrated by the lack of progress over the 18 months, backed off. The other parties, led by the European Union, extended the deadline by a month and finally reached the deal announced Wednesday.