On February 25, Incheon Startup Park officially opens in Songdo, Incheon as the largest startup support space in Korea. Incheon Startup Park helps innovative startup companies grow and go global as part of Shinhan Financial Group's mid- to long-term innovation-powered finance plan, the “Triple-K Project." Cho Yong-byoung, chairman of Shinhan Financial Group gives a congratulatory speech in the event. (Photo: Shinhan Financial Group)

Shinhan Financial Group announced on Feb. 22 that it exceeded its loan and investment targets for 2020 in the Shinhan N.E.O. Project, the group’s financial policy to actively support the Korean government’s New Deal.

Shinhan Financial Group announced the Shinhan N.E.O. Project in June 2020 to support the development of new growth engines in the post-COVID-19 era for the first time as a Korean financial company.

Since then, the financial group has been giving strong support to the development of new growth engines with a focus on three key directions — financial support for new growth engine industries, leading new digital finance and creating a new growth ecosystem.

Shinhan Financial Group supplied 23.5 trillion won in loans for small and medium-sized companies in accordance with the New Deal to come up with new growth engine industries.

Its original loan target was 15.4 trillion won, which means the group attained 153 percent of its target.

Shinhan Financial Group also loaned 35 trillion won of 78 trillion won, its total loan target until 2023, recording a cumulative progress rate of 44.9 percent, which surpassed an appropriate progress rate of 40 percent.

In the fields of innovation investment and New Deal investment, Shinhan Financial Group exceeded its goals in all areas of loans and investment, recording 132 percent in innovation investment (an innovation investment target of 415 billion won / innovation investment of 549.9 billion won) and more than 109 percent in New Deal investment (a New Deal investment target of 600 billion won / New Deal investment of 656.2 billion won), respectively.

Shinhan Financial Group is implanting various future innovation projects to fulfill its responsibilities as a financial institution for future innovation in society.

In February 2019, Shinhan Financial Group launched the Innovation-Powered Growth Project to create an ecosystem for innovation-powered growth companies for the first time in the financial sector.

In December of the same year, it announced that it would push forward with the Triple-K Project to complete its innovative financial platform.

Through the Triple-K Project, Shinhan Financial Group is building Shinhan Square Bridge, a group's innovation-powered growth platform in Seoul, Incheon and Daejeon, and is carrying out various activities to build the foundation for innovative growth, such as supporting the global expansion of innovative companies and running programs to foster unicorn companies.

In June 2020, Shinhan Financial Group went ahead with the Shinhan N.E.O. Project to preemptively overcome difficulties stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic and strengthen new growth engines in the post-COVID-19 era.

In this way, it is gradually upgrading projects to bring innovation to its future and expanding the scope of the projects.

Meanwhile, Shinhan Financial Group is actively participating in revving up its policy-type New Deal funds for the success of the Korean New Deal, and is also taking the initiative of establishing private New Deal funds.

In January, Shinhan Financial Group affiliates, including Shinhan Asset Management, Shinhan Venture Investment and Shinhan Alternative Investment Management, participated in the government’s selection of New Deal fund operators and proposed establishing funds of a total of 770 billion won (285 billion won from Shinhan Financial Group affiliates), including a corporate investment fund and an infrastructure investment fund.

In addition, on Feb. 4, Shinhan Financial Group signed the Future Car and Digital Industry-Financial New Deal Investment and Cooperation Agreement with Hyundai Motor Group in order to take part in establishing funds worth 200 billion won zeroing in on the future car and industrial digital sectors.

Cho Yong-byoung, chairman of Shinhan Financial Group, called on affiliates to extend loan maturity and postpone the payment of interest for small and medium-sized enterprises and small business owners.

Cho made the request in a group management meeting with CEOs of all group affiliates, who participated via a video conferencing system on Feb. 17.

To this end, Shinhan Financial Group will predict various crisis situations by making good use of digital technologies such as AI and big data and, provide various financial support measures to ease customers' burdens such as extending grace periods and extending the maturity of loans based on it.

“Please faithfully play the social roles of finance by preparing various support measures to help our customers wisely overcome difficulties due to the prolonged COVID-19 crisis,” chairman Cho said at the meeting.