NH NongHyup Financial Group Chairman Son Byung-hwan presides over the second meeting of the Global Strategy Council of 2021 at the group headquarters in Jung-gu, Seoul on October 5. (Photo: NH NongHyup Financial Group)

NH NongHyup Financial Group set up a task force to lead the metaverse business after Chairman Son Byung-hwan stressed, “As many experts predict that the era of the metaverse will arrive after smartphones, NH NongHyup Financial Group should also create new business opportunities and actively cope with changes in customers in the metaverse era.”

NH NongHyup Financial Group announced on Oct. 15 that it will attempt to incorporate the metaverse in its business and provide new digital experiences to customers.

The metaverse has emerged as the hottest issue at NH NongHyup Financial Group since Chairman Son held a town hall meeting with affiliates’ employees in July.

Since then, the chairman has ordered affiliates and employees to continue to pay attention to the metaverse, and study the possibility of metaverse commercialization.

Accordingly, NH NongHyup Financial Group decided to develop tasks for each affiliate by setting up the metaverse task force at its Digital Strategy Department and studying the direction of NH NongHyup Financial Group’s metaverse business.

The group’s affiliates such as NH Bank and NH Investment & Securities plan to build their own metaverse platforms to directly test the possibility of turning the metaverse business into a successful financial platform.

NH Bank will try new types of financial platforms by forming a consortium with participants from various industries.

It plans to finish a preliminary preparation process by the end of October and start building a platform with the aim of taking the wraps off it in the first half of 2022.

NH Investment & Securities will introduce the industry’s first self-metaverse platform. The company aims to disclose it at the end of October.

The plan is to make it easier for MZ generation customers to learn about or experience investments, in part, by holding a conference using avatars in the metaverse.

NongHyup Property & Casualty Insurance and NH Savings Bank plan to explore the potential of the metaverse in customer communications and marketing by creating their own maps on the existing metaverse platform ‘Zepeto’.

In the meantime, NH NongHyup Financial Group held the 2nd Global Strategy Council Meeting of 2021 at its headquarters in Jung-gu, Seoul on Oct. 5.

The conference was held as a video conference out of COVID-19 infection concerns. Chairman Son presided over the meeting to go over global business performances in 2021 and discussed future market conditions and pending issues with other participants.

The meeting began with a presentation on a global market outlook by NH Investment & Securities’ Research Division.

Oh Tae-dong, head of the Research Division, examined global market trends and released an in-depth analysis of the global economy by checking trends in the global market, summarizing aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and macro-policies of major countries including monetary policies and exchange rate forecasts.

In particular, in celebration of the 10th anniversary of NH NongHyup Financial Group in 2022, the council had time to look back on the footsteps of the group’s global business and share various opinions about the future direction of the global business.

In this regard, NH Bank plans to continue to expand its global network to revitalize its global IB business.

At the same time, it will gear up to open new overseas branches as scheduled, starting with the opening of its Hong Kong branch and London office this year and will set up a total of six new branches in Sydney, Beijing of China, Ho Chi Minh City of Vietnam and Noida of India among others.

“We will focus on expanding affiliates’ networks and strengthening business capabilities by overseas branches to achieve NH NongHyup Financial Group’s mid- to long-term global business goal of racking up 160 billion won in net profit and running 28 branches in 13 countries by 2025,” Chairman Son said.

“I ask all affiliates to put their utmost into establishing the global business as a key business and a new growth driver of NH NongHyup Financial Group next year when we will celebrate the group’s 10th anniversary.”