IBK President Kwon Seon-joo

The Industrial Bank of Korea (IBK) has been preparing for the age of low-birth and an aged society by expanding financial products that can be transacted without customers visiting banking outlets in what’s called “non face-to-face transactions,” and expanding its overseas operations to diversify its profit sources.

The bank has also been tightening its risk management to cope with the possible problems created from industrial restructuring.

President Kwon Seon-joo, in her speech at a ceremony for the bank’s 55th anniversary, alluded to the aforementioned while outlining the bank’s future strategy and tasks for the bank that lie ahead.

The bank will plow ahead with a project to foster Fintech-related financial products, including the (i-One) bank, an exclusive mobile banking service, which was launched in July, a first among Korean commercial banks. The bank has also conducted an experiment on the ATM mechanism with the help of Fintech to make the use of automatic cash machines easier.

Most recently, the bank introduced the “i-One SME Loan Product,” allowing SMEs to take out loans without coming the bank counters, and “Loans for Those with Jobs.”

The bank has also been providing a service in which customers can transfer money without certificate numbers with just a six-digit secret number and smartphone.

IBK has also been sparing no effort to help Fintech start-ups using SME financial know-how through its Fintech Dream Lab. IBK nominated six SME start-ups for awards at the 2016 IBK Dream Collection Exhibition to be the second-term recipients of its financial support. The bank will also provide non-financial support to those firms, including counseling, mentoring, getting investors for them and overseas advancement, among others, for six months.

IBK has also been running an website where customers can get information on startups and SMEs that want investments, and on middlemen for small investors online to connect investors with SMEs that want investments.

IBK has also been at work to expand its overseas operational network to help SMEs to find earnings sources in such regions as Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Central and South America, which have high potential for growth. The bank had focused on China in particular, and as a result, its earnings in the neighboring country shot up to 10.1 billion won as of the end of June this year, from just 3.8 billion won at the end of last year.

IBK has not been dragging its feet to help SMEs build bases for their growth. As a result, the bank’s outstanding loans to SME borrowers stood at 130 trillion won in April in four years after the figures amounted to 100 trillion won in 2012. To help SMEs sustain their growth, the bank rushed to expand its program geared to support SMEs grow together so that no company would be left behind.

The bank has set aside 3.9 trillion won to be provided to the 5,888 SMEs that signed cooperative agreements with 154 larger companies in March under the Growth Companionship Cooperative Project.

An ad for I-One Bank showing how to use the new banking service launched by IBK. (Photos: IBK)