President Lee Won-tae of Suhyup Bank gives his inaugural speech at the bank.
Suhyup Bank will work for changes and growth at the same time as Lee Won-tae takes over as the new CEO as of April 15.
The new president, in his inauguration address, said he will run the bank to be ready for the introduction of the 2016 Bazel III standards by supplementing its capital and reforming its business structure.
He went on to say that the bank will seek new operational areas as a bank for fisheries and maritime shipping affairs in order to build its profit bases.
“For the time being, I will focus on reform of the bank’ s operational capacity, taking NH Bank’ s reform as a model for benchmarking,” he said. “It will be much easier to reform Suhyup’ s organization since NH Bank has a number of financial affiliates under NH Financial Holding, while Suhyup Bank is the only financial entity of the National Fisheries Central Cooperatives Federation.”
“By the end of July, we will be able to push for reform of the Suhyup Law based on the results of the reform measures outline drawn up by an outside commissioned company,” Lee said.
The new CEO said he will also strengthen the retail banking side, adding that the bank suffered in the past several years because it was not able to adjust to the changing trends in the banking industry with its profits falling substantially to 64.3 billion won from a high of 128.7 billion won in 2007.
Lee has been thinking about strengthening retail banking by reorganizing its operations, which is in line with the bank’ s early moves to strengthen its branch’ s competitive power including giving so much approval authority to branch managers that he calls them “small CEOs.”
Lee recalled that NH Bank strengthened its retail banking early and was able to compete squarely with commercial banks with a nationwide branch network. “Now, Suhyup Bank has a substantial part of its loans going to corporate borrowers, but it should build up its loan portfolio for individual borrowers in the future,” Lee added.
The new president also has it in his mind to look for financial products for online banking and the construction of a next-generation internet banking system to secure future growth engines and find new customers.
The revival of the ministry of fisheries and maritime affairs by the new government led by President Park is also good news for the bank, which the new CEO called “a very timely opportunity.” Lee feels that the bank will have to expand its financial support to various sectors in the maritime shipping and fisheries industries to the extent that the bank would be reborn as a professional bank for fisheries and maritime shipping finance.
