The Industrial Bank of Korea (IBK) will turn 3,300 contract employees into regular full-time employees during the first half of the new year, which will account for about a quarter of the bank’s 12,000 employees. The change comes after an agreement was reached with the union, the bank said on Jan. 2. Positions included phone operators, tellers and office workers.
The union revealed that it will hold further talks with the bank on turning some 2,000 hourly workers into regular full-time positions through a task force to be set up later.
In his New Year’s speech at a ceremony to launch the new year, President Kim Do-jin said the bank will do its best to turn those temporary employees into regular ones as soon as possible.
Senior executive vice president Kim Do-Jin was officially inaugurated as the state-owned bank’s chief executive officer in a ceremony on Dec. 28 at the bank’s Euljiro head office in Seoul.
The new president and CEO joined IBK in 1985. He had served as chief of the bank's management strategy group since 2014 after holding several key posts. His longtime work at the bank will enable him to effectively lead the organization, the FSC said in a statement announcing his nomination on Dec. 23.
The veteran financier with leadership and excellent external communication skills is "deemed suitable for the management of the state-run bank which provides the basis for the finance of small and medium-sized enterprises," it added.
Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, who became the acting president after parliament impeached President Park Geun-hye, is expected to appoint the new CEO.
Kim will serve as CEO of the bank for three years. Kim graduated from Daeryun High School and went on to Dankuk University, where he graduated with a BA in economics.
He held various important posts while with IBK, including CFO, and Head of Management Strategy Division from January 2014 to December 2016. He also served as head of Nambu Regional Headquarters from January 2013 to January 2014. He was the General Manager of the Planning and C-ordination Dept. from July 2010 to January 2012.
Kim, 57, said IBK will do everything possible to help SMEs in poor shape with many of them hitting the limits of their potential. He will also try to safeguard the soundness of IBK’s operation.
In an interview following his nomination as president of IBK on Dec. 25, he told journalists that IBK will go a long way to help those SMEs hobbled by internal and external factors to get back on track, and IBK will also do its best to safeguard its stable operations, saying next year’s financial market conditions are expected to be bleak at best.
He projected that a number of key industries in Korea, including shipbuilding and maritime shipping could have a tough time making ends meet next year, while the steel and construction sectors could have trouble getting new orders due to a slowdown in the economy both at home and abroad.
The bank he inherited did not have key statistics showing that it would expect clear sailing next year; the bad loan ratio in Q3 stood at 0.7 percent, or 0.15 percentage points higher than the previous quarter, while the non-performance loan ratio also worsened to 1.42 percent in the quarter from 1.35 percent in the preceding quarter, putting a red light on the bank’s health as the ratio showed an increase in the number of SMEs on the brink of going belly-up. The new CEO pledged to do all he can to help those SMEs in poor shape to get back on track, as IBK’s performance depends on how well its SME customers do.
IBK will never collect loans provided to SMEs just because they are not doing well as a precautionary measure, unlike large commercial banks that tend to recall loans if their SME customers’ finances deteriorate, he said. “Since the establishment on Aug. 1, 1961, we have constantly expanded our corporate client base,” according to the bank. “Although it took us 44 years to secure more than 500,000 corporate clients a monumental threshold in our own right it only took eight more years to cross the historic one million mark on Dec. 19, 2013.”
As of Dec. 14, 2015, the number of corporate clients reached 1.2 million thanks in no small part to the bank’s consistent efforts at core competency building and platform-building. “Going forward, we will continue to expand our corporate client base as a new growth engine to consolidate our predominant position in the corporate banking business.”
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