The Industrial Bank of Korea’s welfare service is being channeled through the IBK Happiness Sharing Foundation, mainly for families of SME employees in Korea. The bank set up the foundation in April 2006 to provide its welfare services to those families of SME employees who have been getting less welfare benefits than the families of the large corporations.
The bank has provided 30.9 billion won worth of welfare services to families, including 7.5 billion won in scholarships to 5,502 children and 6.7 billion won for the treatment of 1,666 people who fell sick with rare and hard-to-cure diseases. The welfare fund also included 9.9 billion won in support of businesses for economically-isolated families and R&D, and academic activities for the development of SMEs in Korea.
The bank will continue to provide support for patients afflicted with rare and hard-to-cure diseases until they are fully recovered. The bank will also continue to run the Meal Truck for Really Wonderful People, a program which kicked off in 2012 to provide free meals for elderly folks living alone and economically-isolated people.
The bank has been operating 3.5-ton trucks loaded with foods, drinking water and refrigerators at 30 locations around the country. Each lorry carries enough food to feed 300 people at a time.
The bank also kicked off its Kangaroo Store Program in May last year to train unmarried mothers to get jobs. The bank opened the No. 1 Kangaroo Store in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, No. 2 Kangaroo Store in Mapo District, Seoul, and the No. 3 Kangaroo Store in Namdong District, Incheon, all in cooperation with the Holt Children Welfare. The single mothers sell all kinds of goods at the stores and get paid for their work, instead of collecting welfare from the government.
The bank also opened its “IBK Nature Sharing Project” in cooperation with the National Park Management Corp. The project invites economically-isolated people to visit national parks to see traditional artifacts on display, and at the same, time enjoy the nature that is accessible at those parks so they might learn some national history and relax while touring the parks to “heal” their tired bodies and minds.
The Industrial Bank of Korea, or IBK, engages in banking and financial services to individuals, household, small and medium scale businesses, large corporations, and enterprises comprising of government and non-profit organizations. The company offers deposits, loans, credit intermediation, trading, installment financing and venture capital services. The bank expanded in development and sale of computer system, insurance, treasury and foreign exchange businesses.
“As a policy bank that specializes in SME lending, we contributed to upholding the government’s finance policy to help lift the nation’s economy out of its current quagmire and to stimulate Korea’s creative economy by rolling out various new products aimed specifically for financing SMEs, especially start-ups and SOHOs, in 2015,” the bank says. In 2015, the IBK Successful Startup Loan financed startups that had been in business for seven years or less in securing new growth engines and commercializing their advanced technologies so as to enhance their competitiveness. In order to support SOHO borrowers, the IBK SOHO Loan for Hope helps SOHO borrowers facing financial distress, while the i-ONE SOHO Loan provides working capital financing and is in fact the Bank’s first corporate loan product directed exclusively to non-face-to-face channels.
IBK also places significant importance on product development and the timely funding of competitive corporate clients with advanced technologies so that they can successfully market these technologies.
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