Chairman Yoon Jong-kyoo of KB Financial Group. (Photos: KBFG)

KB Financial Group has been working hard to further globalize its operation by consolidating and expanding its operation in southeast Asia under its R.I.S.E. 2019 Strategy to achieve a segregated upper hand in its global position as a leader in financial reform.

The RISE 2019 Strategy looks to make the group’s portfolio diversified and expansive, enhancing the competitiveness of its main areas of operation.

The goals are to reform the infrastructure centered around customers; reform work habits to settle the group’s corporate culture; and seek basic changes in competitive structure by expanding the business areas.

With the RISE Strategy as its main guidelines for operation, the group has been working to rise above the crowded domestic financial market and explore overseas for financial dealings.

To draw up the strategy, the group analyzed factors including regulatory problems in countries the group wants to explore, the demographics of those countries, financial infrastructure, special characteristics of the financial industries, and domestic investors propensity to making investments overseas.

The group has been targeting its operation in four major areas, including CIB, digital, asset management and retail banking, focusing on a number of countries in S.E. Asia such as Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar.

The group has been targeting settling down in those countries with consumer banking, digital banking, auto finance, MFI and securities, to name some while learning the maker up of the financial markets in those countries.

Chairman Yoon Jong-kyoo has been on a trip to Southeast Asia after stopovers in Beijing and Shanghai in a bid to speed up KB Financial Group’s overseas expansion.

He left Seoul on Aug. 3 on route to Beijing to visit the local branch of KB Kookmin Bank. Next he flew to Shanghai to inspect the affiliate bank’s branch there. He then flew to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, to visit TSB Co., a local financial company which Kookmin Card took over in April.

KB Financial has 11 overseas subsidiaries with a key focus on Southeast Asian markets. It has nearly 20 trillion won ($18 billion) in cash, according to its semiannual financial report. KB Financial's biggest shareholder is the National Pension Service with a 9.62 percent stake. About 70 percent of KB Financial shares are held by foreign investors.

In October last year, KB Securities acquired Hanoi-based Maritime Securities, a small brokerage there, and renamed it KB Securities Vietnam.

KB Financial's KB Insurance, a general life insurer, has a presence in Indonesia, following a joint venture with PT Asuransi Sinar Mas, Indonesia's third-largest conglomerate, according to KB Financial Group.

LIG Insurance initially set up the joint venture with the Indonesian conglomerate. KB Financial acquired LIG in 2015, and KB Securities absorbed Hyundai Securities after the group acquired Hyundai in 2016. The two acquisitions during Yoon's first term helped solidify KB Financial.

KB did not disclose its investment plan for KB Insurance Indonesia, but said it is operating “stably” by marketing and selling automobile insurance policies.

The credit card affiliate of KB Financial Group took over a 90 percent stake in the company to engage in installment financing in the local financial market, including the check card operation with Korao Group, a local business group owned and operated by Korean investors.

A view of the building in Yeouido, Seoul, where KB Financial Group has its head office.