President Kim Won-kyu of NH Investment and Securities Co. has earned much credit within the industry for the successful launch of the Institutional Client Department, which is the first such department at a securities firm in Korea. It posted 145.5 billion won in net operating profit in the first seven months of its operation, taking root as a key unit in the company’s many units as far as profitability is concerned, said officials of the company.
The new unit has already surpassed its annual profit target. Manager Chung Ji-yeon said the IC Department showed what other securities firms have to do to boost their profits.
The IC Department was born in the process of streamlining the company’s organization, a product born out of CEO Kim’s ambitious plan to improve the securities firm’s operation. NH Financial Group took over Woori Investment & Securities Co. earlier this year, then it was merged with NH Securities Co. and renamed as one of its affiliates. Each department, such as wholesale, FICC, equity and others dealt with institutional clients as there was no specific unit to take care of those clients for the company; CEO Kim saw a need for a special unit to take charge of them, so he set out to set up the IC Department. Kim felt that a special unit must be set up to integrate various units to take care of the institutional clients divided into securities derivatives and bond derivatives to confuse the ICs as they had to deal with a number of different units to do business.
But many inside the company, especially those within the investment banking unit, had doubts over whether an independent unit could do the job to take care of the ICs. They thought that setting up an independent unit for overseas investment banking is a normal practice, but not for ICs.
But despite the misgivings many had, the new unit has been a resounding success for the company. IC Department Manager Chung said ICs liked that the services are tailor-made for their needs, instead of a simple explanation of the products provided to them by the units that dealt with them in the past.
The success of the IC Department has also done a lot for one of the company’s key aims: to build a competitive wholesale base to take advantage of its expanded scale as a result of the merger.
Securities market sources attributed the company’s know-how to its years of experiences as a leading securities firm and professional manpower in such core diverse areas as product development including derivative products and the successful marketing of the IC Department.
They said NH I&S has been dealing with all kinds of securities products, both at home and overseas, and customers can get the best services from the company.
Manager Chung said, “we can only take advantage of its vast customer network and continue to lead the securities market in Korea.”
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