Shinhan Financial Group holds the ‘1st Shinhan Culture Forum’ on July 7 with Chairman Cho Yong-byoung and other executives and employees participating online. Chairman Cho gives a lecture. (Photo: Shinhan Financial Group)

Cho Yong-byoung, chairman of Shinhan Financial Group, asked employees to become top-class players as subjects recognized for their intrinsic value at the First Shinhan Culture Forum on July 7.

“It is time for Shinhan Financial Group to make a big change its corporate culture to take a leap forward,” Chairman Cho stressed.

Shinhan Financial Group held the culture forum with Chairman Cho and CEOs and executives of the group's affiliates participating online.

The forum was held instead of a management strategy meeting for the second half of this year. The forum will be held regularly in the future.

“Starting from this year, we will share each year’s strategies the group will focus on at the beginning of each year with all employees. In this corporate culture we can speed up their execution in the second half of each year,” Chairman Cho said.

Shinhan Financial Group embarked upon the “RE:BOOT Shinhan” campaign, meaning that Shinhan Financial Group will make a fresh start as a world-class digital group as this year’s Shinhan Culture Forum slogan.

“We should delete what needs to be thrown away first,” Chairman Cho continued, insisting that obstacles against a new corporate culture such as customary work methods be removed, and internal management processes zero in on customers.

“The second step is to reload the core values of the Shinhan culture, including customer-centered services, employee creativity and bold attempts for the future and overcoming the limits of our business to create social value,” Chairman Cho stressed.

Chairman Cho stressed that in order to implement creative destruction and reloading, it is necessary to get closer to customers in all areas, abandon bureaucracy and make decisions based on more objective data.

“In order to make our strategy pay off handsomely, the group’s leaders must have leadership and give sufficient authority to employees in order to accelerate the speed of the organization,” Chairman Cho emphasized.

Meanwhile, Shinhan Financial Group announced on July 12 that it will invest a total of 77 billion won in three innovative digital platform companies through the “One Shinhan Connect New Technology Investment Cooperative Fund No. 1,” the first digital strategic investment fund established by a Korean financial company.

Shinhan Financial Group selected three companies for the first investment. They were 42dot, Insung Data, PetEasy.

This investment clearly reflects the purposes of the fund's creation including the preoccupation of future markets, the revitalization of group affiliates’ key digital businesses and the expansion of the group’s traffic & transactions through connections with non-financial platforms.

First of all, Shinhan Financial Group will invest 30 billion won in 42dot, a leading company in self-driving mobility technology. 42dot has differentiated self-driving technology and mobility platforms.

Shinhan Financial Group plans to take the lead in the payment/settlement market related to self-driving mobility along with 42dot expected to grow into a key operator in the future mobility market.

The group will also seek ways to jointly develop and provide new financial services in the smart city business.

In order to revitalize Shinhan Bank's core digital business, Shinhan Financial Group has decided to invest 45 billion won in Insung Data.

Shinhan Bank set up the Online-Offline Service (O2O) Promotion Team dedicated to new non-financial businesses, in order to create innovative services based on non-financial platforms in June.

The team plans to launch a new delivery platform as the first non-financial business and provide innovative financial services such as real-time sales settlement to small business owners suffering an economic slump set off the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

Insung Data is a company that operates “Saenggak Daero,” the No. 1 service provider in the last mile logistics market, which has recently attracted much attention.

Shinhan Bank will collaborate with Insung Data in areas such as specialized delivery services and the recruitment of merchants who need such services.

In order to penetrate the pet market, Shinhan Financial Group will invest 2 billion won in PetEasy, which operates a pet beauty service reservation platform “Banjak.” The group will collaborate with PetEasy to develop pet-related specialized financial products.

It also plans to provide a variety of specialized financial services to customers in conjunction with the Banjak Platform with more than 1,000 merchants.