Hana Financial Group Chairman Kim Jung-tae and his staff pose for 

pictures after climbing Mt. Bukhan to see the sun-rise view of the new year on Jan. 1.

(Photo:Hana Financial)

Chairman Kim Jung-tae of Hana Financial Group in his New Year’s statement, said the group solidified its base for a new leap forward last year with the merger of Korea Exchange Bank and BNB in New York, thus strengthening the group’s global operations.

As this year is the year of the Blue Horse in the lunar calendar, he hopes that the blue horse’s health and power would help all family members of the group this year.

Kim warned that the financial market’s environment crisis will continue to persist this year, too, and more than 80 percent of the businesses in Korea will either keep their tight management style or keep it at the current level, although the economic growth projection is set at 3 percent.

What is more serious is that the trend in the financial market is changing due to the development of social media and IT, which is changing the consumers’ purchasing patterns rapidly. As the markets for recorded music and publications have trended toward online orders, the financial market, too, is faced with a similar change.

As noted in the “Bank 3.0” Vision, mobile contacts between customers and banks would run around 20 to 30 times monthly, but contact through walking into bank branches would be down to two or three times a year, indicating that unless financial firms’ operations are changed, their survival would not be guaranteed.

This year, there are a number of urgent matters to be solved to keep the group operating, and smart finance and mobile credit card, among others, have opened a new era for the financial industry. “We have to continue to introduce changes in all sectors of the group’s operations,” Kim said.

“The separation of individual and corporate customers is no longer significant in our marketing operation due to the changes in the financial environment. The individual and corporate customers are inter-related basically and we have to focus the marketing strategies on synergy and big data, linking the two sides to expand the number of our customers,” the chairman said.

“We also have to change our global operation, too, in such a way as to make increased profit to the extent that it would expand to equal that made at home, taking advantage of the group’s global network, which is the largest among domestic banks in Korea.

“The key matter to bringing changes to the group’s operation is taking action, as any good idea is nothing unless it is implemented,” Kim said. 

“In this age of the new normal, financial companies compete with each other for profit, risk management, and customers to maximize results. Under the new “3.0” age, we should focus on growth and actions as the keys to making a profit. ‘Now’ is always the best time to take action, not ‘today’ or ‘soon.’

“Our lives are a big theater, and actors and stage dramas become popular when the actors perform best. We have to do our best for the company we work for to create better results. We have to always have in our minds what actions we should take for the company and check if we have been doing our best, as best actions come from those frames of mind,” the chairman said.