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

Hana Financial Group is well on its way to providing 20 trillion won in support to startups and venture firms in investments and loans in the next three years to help them to develop the needed new technologies to give them a competitive advantage. The loans will be provided even if they don’t have mortgages to back them up so long as they have viable technologies to make them competitive.

The financial group will set up the Reform Financial Council to run the fund to make sure they are provided to the firms that most deserve the funding, the group said on June 9.

Chairman Kim Jung-tai will be the chairman of the council, which will include CEOs of the affiliates of the group to make up the 17 members of the council. It will be responsible for the reform of the corporate loan system in such a way as to boost the loans, and direct and indirect investments while increasing the fund.

The group plans to provide 20 trillion won in reform financing over three years, the largest in its history, 5 trillion won more than 15 trillion won announced for 2018-2020. Last year 6.4 trillion won was given in loans under the reform finance system.

“Every employee of all affiliates should participate in the reform finance.” said the chairman, adding that it has the significance of financially contributing to society. The chairman is to make sure the reform finance system will ultimately lead to the group’s growth as it will help the economy to grow.

The Hana Digital Transformation Fund to be set up by Hana Ventures is likely to strengthen the reform finance system, as the funding will be provided to business firms up for the digitalization of their operations and the development of the technologies related to digitalization. The fund is expected to total 100 billion won when launched, with the group set to chip in 55 billion won to the fund.

KEB Hana Bank has been strengthening its reform finance of late, with the bank putting out some 500 billion won in investments, both direct and indirect, under the reform finance strategy. The banks said it will strengthen its financial support to startups during the launch of “the 8th Term of One Q Agile Rep” in April, which is the first startup development program announced by a bank.

Hana Bank initially launched the Agile Rap Program in June 2015 to financially support the startups. Up until last year, the bank discovered 54 startups and gave 3.9 billion won in loans to 12 of them so far.

This year, the bank is set to give the loans to the firms in such key fintech areas as AI, blockchain, Big Data, and others, along with other forms of support including providing office spaces, mentoring on management and tax matters, and making its network available to them in addition.

President Ji Sung-kyu said the bank will give diverse support to those firms not limited to boosting the fund, but also in the area of exploring overseas financial market for operation. He said the bank will continue to provide its financial support to those firms with great potentials for growth so that their fresh new ideas would be a business model for digitalization for some firms.

They will also be given the bank’s support to form an academy and industry cooperative project with local colleges and universities. The bank will also invest 20 billion won for stakes in those startups until 2021, the CEO said.