Chairman Kim Jung-tae of Hana Financial Group. (Photo:HFG)

Hana Financial Group said Oct. 26 its nine-month net profit rose 22.8 percent on year, helped by higher interest income and a sharp decline in loan-loss provisions. Net profit stood at 1.8 trillion won (US$1.57 billion) in the nine months ending in September on a consolidated basis, up 351.1 billion won from a year ago, Hana Financial said in a statement.

For the third quarter, Hana Financial’s net profit gained 15.6 percent on year to 589.4 billion won. Hana Financial’s net interest margin, a key barometer of profitability, fell 0.03 percentage point to 1.96 percent at the end of September.

Flagship KEB Hana Bank posted a net profit of 1.7 trillion won for the nine months, up 244.4 billion won from a year earlier.

KEB Hana Bank’s interest income and revenue from commission fees rose 10.2 percent on year to 4.5 trillion won for the third quarter, Hana Financial said.

Chairman Kim Jung-tae attended a ceremony for the Declaration of Digital Vision to turn Hana Financial Group into a database for its customers. The financial group on Oct. 30 held the event at the group’s Chungla Data Center where all the CEOs of affiliate firms and key executives were gathered to declare the new vision and reorganization to kick off the digital age for the group.

Chairman Kim said the group will collect data on customers’ transactions from now on with the group and its affiliates, in addition to the information on financial market and big changes that could impact the financial market. The data will be stored in such as way that it can be easily accessible to the group, its affiliates and customers. The group and its affiliates will be able to cope with changes in the financial market and make faster decisions in its policies by using the data stored at the center, the chairman said.

The chairman added that the joy of customers won’t change even in an era of digitalized finance. He said the group should provide all kinds of financial data from its digitalized facilities so that customers might be able to best experience using the financial data at the center.

He also unveiled a reorganization plan for the group and its affiliates, with the major change being the establishment of a digital lab at KEB Hana Bank so that the digital organization culture would spread to all of the affiliates of the group from the digital lab.

The chairman also noted that a digital strategy dep’t will be set up while the Operational Process Reform Dep’t will be upgraded to a headquarters dep’t to speed up the introduction of the data based operational process.

A strategic consolidation and modernization of Hana Financial Group’s data infrastructure, the Hana Financial Group data center promises to be one of the most advanced on the Korean peninsula. DPR joined and represented the client’s team as the preconstruction manager. The first phase of the project includes design, preconstruction and construction of a seven-story, 325,000-sq.-ft.data center and 13-story, 200,000-sq.-ft. administration building.

With DPR’s guidance, collaborative preconstruction methods were introduced and deployed, including a big room colocation space, BIM tools, target value design, and a pioneering open-book guaranteed maximum price contract scheme.

As technical mission-critical experts, the DPR team guided the project team through the evaluation and selection methodologies for cooling systems, equipment selections, redundancy and UPS systems, data hall and building configuration, and MEP-systems-driven core/shell design considerations.