Will replace corporate vehicles with eco-friendly ones by 2030 in order to set an example for other companies
NH Bank says on March 17 that Kwon Joon-hak, the president of NH Bank, which established the Big Data Council, leads the data business by directly training working-level officials. (Photo: NH Bank)
NH Bank is zeroing in on combining technology and finance as a key task of its digital transformation. NH NongHyup Financial Group established NH Digital Innovation Campus in Seocho-dong, Seoul in 2019.
The campus has the NH Digital R&D Center where fintech researchers work and the NH Fintech Innovation Center that supports startups. President Kwon attends the Digital R&D Center weekly to help develop digital financial solutions such as big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and blockchain.
“We will put all our capabilities into technology and finance convergence and DT,” Kwon said in a meeting with reporters.
On taking office as president of NH Bank in January, Kwon suggested making NH Bank a leading digital bank that can serve customers well as a management goal. In order to expedite digital transformation, Kwon overhauled the bank’s organization.
AI is the technology that President Kwon considers the core of digital transformation. “If AI is well integrated with finance, it can provide better services to consumers, and employees can handle their work more efficiently,” he said.
NH Bank will launch a platform exclusively for businesses as a means of winning digital finance ahead of others.
The bank will launch NH Small Business Partner, a mobile platform tailored to small business owners in April and NH Business Digital Platform for small companies in the second half of this year.
“We analyzed about 1,000 corporate finance managers’ complaints by conducting a survey of them,” Kwon said. “We will apply the results to the platform.”
NH Bank will introduce the second stage of everyday life finance services in August in the field of MyData, being promoted at the level of NH NongHyup Financial Group.
The second stage will cover customized consulting services to help customers’ year-end tax adjustment and functions such as a financial planner to guide individual financial schedules in advance and help pay for loans.
It will include a service that recommends the central and local governments’ subsidies. NH Bank’s MyData services will develop with a focus on three major services – general finance, everyday finance and sustainable win-win services.
NH Bank is also recognizing the huge growth potential of the big data business. This is because NH Bank has a lot of data accumulated through its credit card business and has a lot of room to collaborate with distributors affiliated with agricultural cooperatives.
“We will step up our efforts to nurture talented people with data analysis capabilities and recruiting such talented people from the outside,” Kwon said, “We recently established the Big Data Council. The council will play a leading role in boosting the bank's data utilization capabilities.”
On the global stage, NH Bank is working on opening a London office in the United Kingdom according to Kwon.
The London office will strengthen NH Bank’s investment financing capabilities through the establishment of a global investment bank (IB) network.
In addition to London, NH Bank is currently pushing to open branches in Beijing and Hong Kong of China, Noida of India, Ho Chi Minh City of Vietnam and Sydney of Australia.
In the meantime, NH Bank announced on April 15 that it has declared a shift to eco-friendly corporate vehicles by 2030 at the Ministry of Environment’s second declaration ceremony for promoting the use of pollution-free vehicles held at the Plaza Hotel on April 14.
NH Bank has been actively participating in the government's 2050 carbon neutral policy through expansion of green finance and ESG management.
The bank began to use an electric car as its corporate vehicle in February 2021 in Bucheon for the first time and will convert more than 40 corporate vehicles into pollution-free cars this year.
NH Bank has been giving strong support to K-EV100 Initiative such as launching NH Green Business Loan which provides loans with preferential interest rates to companies that practice eco-friendly management such as participating in the K-EV100 Initiative in late March.
“We will carry out various green finance and ESG-related projects in accordance with NongHyup Financial Group’s strategies and will actively participate in the government’s ESG-related policies,” said an NH Bank official in the declaration ceremony.