Hana Financial Group is promoting financial support worth 26 trillion won to about 700,000 people a year for win-win growth with vulnerable people suffering from the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic and rising interest rates.
This project, named “Happiness Finance,” focuses on four key areas — small business owners/self-employed people; ordinary people, young people and low-income borrowers; household loan consumers and social value creation.
“As the internal and external economic environments become more difficult, finance must first take the lead and create a path to shared growth with the marginalized in our society,” Hana Chairman Ham Young-joo said on Sept. 4.
“To this end, all employees of Hana Financial Group will work hand in hand.”
First of all, the lender will provide about 19 trillion won in loans for 350,000 people in order to support vulnerable borrowers’ soft landing in 2022. Most of the vulnerable borrowers are small business owners.
Hana Bank and Hana Card are actively participating in the New Start Fund Program jointly promoted by the financial sector to reduce financial burdens on small business owners and self-employed people hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Following the COVID-19 financial support measures scheduled to end this month, Hana Bank will support them with its own maturity extension and amortization deferral programs as a soft landing plan beginning in October.
Through this, the plan is to ease the financial burden of repayment on small business owners who are operating normally or recovering.
The bank will maintain financial supports to lower loan interest for small business owners.
When the maturity of high-interest loans for small businesses exceeding 7 percent per annum is extended, Hana Bank will cut their interest rates by up to 1 percentage points.
Hana Bank will also provide support to 250,000 financially vulnerable people.
Financial support tailored to young people, the elderly, and ordinary people will be implemented with three trillion won. It will also provide a wide array of non-financial services for them.
Hana Bank plans to operate a youth startup financial support program beginning from October.
The program will provide a 0.7 percentage point cut in interest rates on new loans to young entrepreneurs within seven years after starting their businesses.
Interest cuts for vulnerable borrowers who faithfully repay will result in spare money and the spare money will be used to repay the principal.
A customized support of four trillion won will be implemented for about 90,000 household loan users so that the bank and loan customers will be able to share financial burdens related to housing.
In particular, Hana Bank is promoting the conversion of loans to fixed-rate loans to lighten interest burdens on end-users of household loans due to a rise in variable interest rates during an interest rate hike.
Hana Bank is implementing a fixed rate replacement program for floating interest rate mortgage loans for household loan users that are not eligible for safe conversion loans.
Borrowers of floating rate household loans who have not received benefits due to their house exceeding a certain price level can relieve the burden of high interest rates.
The safe conversion loan is applied for in a non-face-to-face way to enhance convenience.
Hana Financial Group will provide one trillion won in financial support over the next five years to enable the project to create social value beyond financial support for the underprivileged.
With an eye towards creating jobs for young people and middle-aged people, Hana Financial Group will implement various projects such as job-linked internships at socially innovative companies, nationwide startup support programs, and customized education for senior citizens’ re-employment.
Hana Financial Group’s support program will drive the growth of future generations by helping children and young people of low-income families.
At the same time, its self-reliance programs will support young people about to leave orphanages get on their feet.
It will continue to carry out ESG activities for the vulnerable, including the elderly and single mothers as well.
