Industrial Bank of Korea announced on May 9 that it will reform the remittance fee system by removing all fees regardless of the amounts of money remitted, although it charged 1,000 won on funds in excess of one hundred thousand won.

 IBK at the same time will enter the financial market in Indonesia as President Cho Jun-hee is scheduled to travel to Jakarta to sign an MOU with Bank Rakyat Indonesia, the second largest bank in the southeastern country on May 31, for an overall cooperation in two banks banking operations.

 Banking sources said IBK has taken a round-about way to enter the southeast Asian nation as setting up branches  or M&As have not been possible.

 Under the MOU, the two banks will be able to deal with their nationals in each other’ s country. For example, IBK would provide guarantees for Korean nationals and business firms seeking loans from BRI, which will provide loans to them on the guarantees provided by IBK. An IBK employee will be assigned to BRI in Jakarta to coordinate the transactions, the IBK said.

 President Cho is scheduled to stay in Jakarta for three days and check on possible M&A targets in the host country and see the ways to take over a local financial institution.

Indonesia with over 240 million in population and plenty of natural resources, has been attracting many foreign banks to take over a local financial institution, which boosted the prices of those financial institutions forcing IBK to be careful about the prices as they have become increasingly burdensome.

 A number of Korean banks including Woori and Shinhan failed so far in their bids to take over a local bank due to both exorbitant prices and local financial regulations.

 Cho said IBK should set up an operation in the southeast Asian country and he called on Ahmad Bahicuni, chief financial officer of the Indonesian bank to sign an MOU, covering providing loans to Korean firms operating in Indonesia, cooperation on Indonesian workers remittance from Korea and the dispatch of an IBK staff to BRI to coordinate the cooperation between the two banks.

 In the meantime, IBK announced that it will hold a prize presentation ceremony for individuals and corporate customers during the first half this year,  which helped to create jobs during the first-half of this year prizes in the form of commodity coupons worth 200 million won.

 The individual award winners are to be selected in a lottery among those who newly opened deposit accounts at IBK, subscribed for bancassurance, funds, smart banking, and others. Prizes would include 17 sets of LED TV, robot cleaners (34) and picnic sets (3,400) to be presented to 3,451 winners.

 IBK also announced that it will exempt all kinds of fees for the financially isolated people due to their bad credit ratings and the handicapped people who used to get a 50 percent reduction in fees.

 Included among those who get the total fee exemptions are girl and boy family heads, those who get basic living support from the government, and national heroes, the bank said.

 IBK said recently that its outstanding loans to SMEs  amounted to over 100 trillion won as of April 23, which is owed to its policy ‘not to take away umbrellas when raining’ declared during the 2008 financial crisis, becoming the only bank in the country that did not recall loans during the crisis and with so much loans outstanding for SME borrowers, which was achieved without mergers with other banks.

 IBK’s loans to SMEs exceeded 1 trillion won for the first time in 1981 since its launching in 1961, amounted to 10 trillion won in 1993 and 50 trillion won in 2006 and amounted to 100.3 trillion won as of April 23. It is more significant as the loans to SMEs amounted to that much without merging with other banks, IBK said.