CEO Chung Won-jae of Woori Card.

An ad for Woori Card’s Jeong Seok series which secured over 4 million customers in just 16 months since it was put on the market. (Photos: Woori Card)

Woori Card secured around 4 million customers in 16 months since launching its “Card Jeong Seok (Founding Stone)” series.

The Card Jeong Seok point went on the record to have secured over 4 million accounts in the shortest possible time, about 250,000 customers new accounts every month since its introduction in the market.

The enviable record is being attributed to reflecting the diverse changes in customer needs in the service of the credit card, providing the benefits to the customers that they can really feel. Speedy service in line with the trends in the payment approval area is also a factor.

The Card Jeong Seok series is made of 12 kinds of credit cards, and seven check cards. The credit cards are made up by the benefits that the customers want and check cards by the ages of the customers.

The series also strengthened the benefits for the simple payment services of the credit cards, making leaps and bounds in growth in such things as Samsung Pay, Naver Pay, Kakao Pay, and Payco, among others.

Woori Card also has put on the market the Card Jeong Seok series centered on “work and life balance,” containing the benefit of discount payment requests, the Card Founding Stone Wobion Plus, and the Card Jeong Seok SSO3 Check.

Those cards have been designed with the works of Korean-style painter Kim Hyun-jeong. A set of fresh marketing programs have been taken up.

The credit card firm took time out during an exhibition held in April to introduce the Korean-style painter Kim Hyun-jeong’s art pieces used to design the Card Jeong Seok series, and showed off its new credit cards.

The Jeong Seok Card of Woori Card which comes in 12 kinds of credit cards and seven check cards.

The company followed it up at the end of last year with another event to introduce the Work and Life Balance, which helped boost the brand value of the new credit card.

Behind the rising popularity of the Card     series was President Chung Won-jae’s management philosophy that they should make the goods that can sell well, Officials of Woori Card said.

Woori Card won the top place in the Premium Brand Index Check Card Sector sponsored by the Korea Standards Association for six years in a row, thanks to the enormous popularity of the Card Founding Stone Card.

The South Korean government plans to fully cash out of Woori Financial Group by selling its remaining 18.3 percent stake in it by 2022. It will not sell the shares all at once, but offload them in sequence over three years starting from 2020.

The schedule for a complete privatization of Woori Financial has removed uncertainty about its future.

The Public Fund Oversight Committee (PFOC) under the Financial Services Commission (FSC) finalized its plan to sell off the remaining stake in Woori Financial on June 25. It will divest the stake in two to three stages starting from 2020, offloading up to 10 percent each time by 2022.

The PFOC will sell the stake through public tenders where bidders who place a bid above the predetermined price can buy the stake they are willing to buy at the bid price.

The government used this sale method when it sold its stake to the oligopolistic stockholders in 2016. Those who can join the bidding are existing oligopolistic stockholders and new investors who satisfy a minimum bidding quantity of 4 percent.

The PFOC will use block sales if the stake is not sold out. Up to 5 percent of any remaining shares will be sold via a block deal in each tranche.