In his New Year’s address discussing the group’s management strategy for the new year, Chairman Kim Yong-hwan of NH Financial Group said 2017 is the initial year that NH Financial Group will make a rebound in its operations.
In order to achieve the management target for this year, he said the first step is to boost profitability through tight internal operation. First, he is for each affiliate strengthening its core capacity to hike the effectiveness for quality growth. Each affiliate is expected to achieve the management target that was established at realistic level. That will help the group recover its stature as a profit generator, recovering the customers’ and market’s confidence in the group.
Second, risk management should be strengthened to make the financial group more adaptable.
“We should find factors for risk before they occur, so we will be able to take care of them with preemptive measures using the risk management infrastructure that we built last year. We set up a unit to build the risk management structure by analyzing the industry and improve key areas, including portfolio, management and early warning systems.”
The Risk Management Headquarters will prepare scenarios for each management risk, complete with detailed analyses. Jobsites will make sure that the measure will be implemented when needed. All affiliates of the group will make sure to take care of everything that they are required to comply with, including Bazel III, IFRS and other financial regulations, especially those with detailed responsive measures.
“Third, all of us should work hard to create synergy among the affiliates of the group. As a financial group, we opened the first multiple outlet, strengthening the jointly connected business areas with excellent results from corporate investment banking business, especially from investments, among others, to make us a leading financial group in terms of synergy creation, noted the chairman.”
He said the group has a huge customer following, having been engaged in diverse financial business operations with its affiliates, including such sectors as mutual savings, economics and distribution, among others, and a national financial network to boot, which is an envy of rival financial groups. He thinks the key to the creation of synergy is collected mindsets of all officers and employees, with all affiliates moving in the same direction to create synergy.
Fourth, finding new growth engines should be a target for the entire group, he said. Customers’ needs are very hard to predict in terms of the direction of the changes, as they are associated with Fintech, and changes occur so fast that even the customer has a hard time keeping pace.
“We have to find new growth engines in the rapidly changing financial environment with no limits for space and time. Thus, I am set to find them in such areas as digital, retirement finance and global terms.”
The group set up a digital financial team and digital banking headquarters at NH Bank in the hope of establishing an “all-win-bank,” spurring the use of Big Data to prepare for the company’s future.
“We also have to incorporate customers asset-management service and financial products’ competitive power so the group will be known for its asset management and retirement finance. “Globally, we should operate in countries with dominant agricultural sectors in Asia, focused on such areas as farm finance, distribution and economic businesses. We should seek and find business models particular to NH Financial and take advantage of the bridgeheads that were set up last year at a number of strategic locations abroad,” he said.
“We have to sharpen out proud DNA, with this year being the financial group’s 7th anniversary, and we tried our best to change our management structure based on market and marketing. But we have to reexamine our positions and situations despite the positive evaluations for our achievement.
“We set up and operated the NH Future Reform Leader last year … now have to throw away any entrenched practices to create an effective and speedy corporate culture.”