Woori Bank announced on March 24 that it held an inauguration ceremony for new President Lee Won-duk at the Woori Bank headquarters in Jung-gu, Seoul.
The inauguration ceremony was held in a simple manner by minimizing the number of attendees according to Lee’s will.
“We owe what we are today to our customers’ unwavering love and support,” Lee said in his inaugural address.
“Our bank was completely privatized. The privatization is a new beginning of Woori Bank in its journey to grow into a great bank. Let’s make our history of realizing greater glory in the future.”
“A great bank is determined by how many customers a bank has and how much love it receives.” President Lee added, mentioning customers, the market, and employees as the three key management keywords.
“It is right and natural that we ought to make Woori Bank a bank of customers, by customers and for customers,” Lee continued, expressing his aspirations for customer-oriented management.
“The essence of the 4th industrial revolution is the collapse of boundaries, in particular, those of the finance industry,” Lee stressed.
“We will focus all our capabilities and resources on technologies and platforms to better compete with IT giants.”
“You, employees, are the best hope we have," President Lee said about the value of human resources. “Let’s pioneer new ways in the financial business with me. Let’s make Woori Bank a great bank by overcome difficulties.”
After his inauguration ceremony, President Lee visited a long-time corporate customer in Seoul.
Then he went to the Suyu-dong Financial Center of Woori Bank which serves quite a number of customers among Woori Bank branches and encouraged employees and listened to their opinions.
Meanwhile, in order to practice customer-centered on-site management, Woori Bank will carry out an organizational restructuring by reducing supporting units at Woori Bank Headquarters and strengthening sales units.
It is planning to boost the operational efficiency of the bank president support organization by abolishing the secretariat for the bank president and to expand sales units in the general sales and foreign exchange segments.
Woori Bank announced on March 28 that it would open “Digital Express Branch,” a mini branch that can handle most business processes for customers through video counseling and self-transactions.
Digital Express Branch is an unmanned store composed of three types of digital devices — a digital desk, a smart kiosk, and an automatic teller machine (ATM).
At the digital desk, customers can receive consulting not only about products but use other services at the real branch level through video consultation at the digital desk.
Moreover, the smart kiosk enables customers to open new accounts, receive debit cards and make various reports to Woori Bank. By using the ATM, they can deposit, withdraw and transfer money.
Although Digital Express Branch is an unmanned channel based on digital devices and systems, Woori Bank is looking to boost financial accessibility for those in neighborhoods where offline Woori Bank branches were closed by flexibly operating Digital Express Branch according to the neighborhoods’ characteristics.
In the case of the Digital Express Munsan Branch in Gyeonggi Province, it is being run as a completely unmanned channel considering the fact that there were not many customers, and the transaction volume was not large even before a store in the area was closed.
Digital Express Ui-dong Branch in Seoul operates a pop-up window to which a bank employee is deployed only on specific days when heavy customer traffic is expected.
However, Digital Express Guil Branch will run a pop-up window as regularly as general Woori Bank branches as its neighborhood does not have any regular offline bank branches.
But it will offer limited banking services in order to expedite business processing.
However, Digital Express Munsan Branch and Digital Express Ui-dong Branch will temporarily have guides to help customers learn how to use digital devices and systems.
