Chairman Sohn Tae-seung of Woori Financial Group. (Photo: WFG)

Chairman Sohn Tae-seung of Woori Financial Group issued a special order to Woori Bank to double the number of its SME customers this year.

To go after the chairman’s special order, the bank boosted the number of Operational Headquarters managers to 25 around the country, who will assign 34 branch manager-level officers.

Chairman Sohn also doubles as president of Woori Bank until March next year and Sohn’s special order was also to utilize the 34 branch manager level officials by having them assigned to the forefront of the bank’s operation to take advantage of their vast experiences in diverse areas of the commercial finance.

Most of them once served as a branch manager and thus each of them has a local network of the people useful to the bank and it will be easier for them to help the bank boost the number of its SME customers around the country.

They will be given all the rights accorded to a branch manager in addition to special incentives for attracting the new customers. Their main job would be to pass on the experiences they got as branch managers, find new SME clients for the bank and help the marketing programs. Also as part of Chairman Sohn’s call to boost the number of SME clients for the bank, Operation Promotion Centers were set up.

Sohn’s call for more SME clients is understandable as Woori Bank went is on record as offering the lowest amount of loans to SMEs last year among the four major commercial banks. KB Kookmin Bank was No. 1 with 8.935,9 trillion won dished to its SME clients, while Woori Bank’s loans were half of what the rival bank offered, standing at 4.213,2 trillion won last year.

Officials of the bank said last year the bank operation focused more on quality than quantity, restricting the growth of its loans. But his year, the bank aims to dish out twice the amount of the loans released last year to make up for the dismal amount of loans that the bank provided last year.

Woori Bank is a bank headquartered in Seoul, South Korea and Woori Bank is a subsidiary of the parent company Woori Financial Group. The bank was founded back in 1899, originally called Daehan Cheon-il Bank, renamed Joseon Sangup Bank in 1911, then Commercial Bank of Korea in 1950s.

Following the 1997 Asian financial crisis, it merged with the former Hanil Bank and Peace Bank to become Hanvit Bank. Woori Bank adopted its current name in 2002.

Its Jongno branch is located in the Gwangtonggwan, the oldest continuously-operating bank building in Korea. It was registered as one of city's protected monuments on March 5, 2001. In 2004, Woori Bank opened its Gaeseong Industrial Complex branch, in Gaeseong, North Korea.

In May 2009, Woori Bank became the first South Korean bank to issue UnionPay debit cards in China. In March 2010 it became the first foreign bank to issue Shanghai Tourism Cards in mainland China.