President Kwon Kwang-seok of Woori Bank. (Photos: Woori Bank)

“Woori Bank’s foremost priority is on digital transformation, designed to enhance the competitiveness of digital platforms through hyper personalization marketing and channel innovation,” Woori Bank President Kwon Kwang-seok said.

President Kwon on Sept. 17 said, “Woori Bank is implementing digitalization of deposit and loan products as well as various services.”

Kwon, born in 1963, became the youngest president of a commercial bank when he took office. At that time, he came up with the keyword “innovation.” President Kwon called for the company to brace for the post-COVID-19 pandemic era by aggressively exploring new revenue sources amid the trend of low growth and low interest rates.

Of late, digital transformation has become a top topic in financial circles to cope with the contactless situation, caused by the spread of the coronavirus.

A view of the Woori Won Banking app, opened by Woori Bank.

Last August, Woori Bank launched “Woori Won Banking,” a mobile banking app. President Kwon said Woori Bank is trying to implement company-wide digitalization to offer top-tier services to financial consumers. Woori Bank’s spearheading efforts to digitalize its operation have already begun to pay off, he said.

One of the tangible outcomes the commercial bank has seen in the digitalization segment is “Woori Won Loan for Office Workers,” released by Woori Bank in March.

President Kwon said Woori Bank’s digital transformation is focusing on maximizing its capabilities through overall digital transformation involving customer-oriented business and its in-house work processes.

“Channel transformation,” with a focus on profitability, is one of the key strategies the president has adopted. He said Woori Bank plans to build a cluster-style channel by reinventing the conventional operation paradigm, focusing on each branch office.

Kwon said his bank plans to enhance the competitiveness of each business and the efficiency of the operation of each channel through a hub-oriented collaboration regime.

Kwon stressed the importance of strengthening of the competitiveness of the online channel. To this end, he said Woori Bank plans to upgrade the functions of the Woori Won Banking app.

The bank plans to adopt ways of integrating contact and contactless marketing activities by making the most of offering information tailored based on big data. He did not hide his intention of offering Woori products through other platform companies.

When he took office as Woori Bank president in March, the external and internal situation was not rosy. The COVID-19 pandemic began to spread, coupled with troubled funds sold by Lime Asset Management, and derivatives-linked funds. Upon his inauguration, Kwon held online sessions with bank officials to explore preferred tasks.

His first personnel change involved the inauguration of the “Future Financing Design Department,” under the direct control of the president. The move was designed to regularize communications between headquarters and business outlets.

President Kwon has stressed customer-oriented priority and structural overhaul. Under the stewardship of President Kwon, the bank has revised its key performance indicators, or KPIs by prioritizing customer profitability rate index and financial consumer protection index.

He also liberalized the company’s dress code as part of customer-oriented management paradigm. The move is a first step to make Woori Bank an “innovative and flexible” institution, surpassing the change of the dress code, he said.