NongHyup Bank to Give Massive Financial Support to Financially Marginalized

Lee Seok-yong, CEO of NH NongHyup Bank, checks business operations by overseas markets and has a communication time with employees in a video conference at NongHyup Bank’s headquarters on Feb. 8. (Photo: NH NongHyup Bank)

Lee Seok-yong, president of NongHyup Bank, announced on Jan. 18 that NongHyup Bank will provide financial support worth 12.6 trillion won to fulfill its responsibilities as a regional financial institution — a bridge that connects cities and rural areas.

The NongHyup Bank financial support package consists of four parts - lowering interest rates to support the financially underprivileged, making special contributions to regional credit guarantee foundations to support small and medium-sized enterprises and small business owners, the complete exemption of NH All-One Bank money transfer fees and contribution to the growth of local economies by activating the Hometown Donation System.

Through this, people in need are expected to receive more than 100 billion won in benefits annually.

First, NongHyup Bank will lower interest rates on loans to take the lead in easing the pain of the financially underprivileged, such as small business owners going through difficulties.

The preferential interest rate provided to farmers for household and corporate loans will be increased by 0.2 percentage points, from 0.3 percent to 0.5 percent, and the preferential interest rate for small and medium-sized enterprises.

Self-employed small businesses operating agro-food enterprises will be increased by 0.2 percentage points, from 0.1 percent to 0.3 percent.

For young people suffering from high interest rates, preferential interest rates for monthly rent support will be raised by 0.2 percentage points, from the initial 0.3 percent to 0.5 percent. NongHyup Bank will cut interest rates on variable-rate mortgage loans by 0.8 percentage points.

NongHyup Bank will also actively cooperate with financial support measures for small and medium-sized enterprises and low-credit borrowers such as an automatic reduction of loan principal by financial authorities.

Second, for SMEs and small business owners neglected in financial support outside the institutional system, NongHyup Bank will make a special contribution of 70 billion won to regional credit guarantee foundations, and will provide 1 trillion won in funds to others to help companies resolve financial difficulties and promote business stability.

Third, all customers will be completely exempted from online money transfer fees when using NH All One Bank, NongHyup Bank’s financial platform for smartphone users.

NH All-One Bank is close to opening its next-generation platform. It plans to introduce a cloud environment for the first time in the financial sector to improve the stability and performance of its services, expand user convenience by expanding remittance targets, launch exclusive products and add a dark mode.

Lastly, NongHyup Bank will launch new products such as the NH Hometown Love Donation Deposit and Installment Savings and NH Hometown Love Donation Card in order to encourage many people to participate in the Hometown Love Donation System that will begin in 2023.

Meanwhile, NongHyup Bank announced on Jan. 31 that it launched New NH All-One Bank which is more than 30% faster than its existing smartphone application.

It is the first banking app based on a platform-as-a-service (PaaS)-based cloud system and microservice architecture (MSA).

PaaS is a type of cloud service that provides an application execution environment necessary for software development as a platform. It has a function that automatically expands performance when transactions are congested.

Microservice architecture (MSA) is an architecture that divides a large app into many smaller apps that can be separately deployed, enabling rapid development and deployment.

New NH All-One Bank expanded remittance limits through the introduction of a physical OTP system - 100 million won at a time and up to 500 million won per day.

It lets customers apply for mobile certificates, expand remittance-enabled accounts (funds, retirement pension and others), change account passwords and lift amount limits on the mobile application. Therefore, it can save customers trips to bank branches.

NongHyup Bank plans to continuously expand financial and non-financial services by fully exempting transfer fees to other banks, beginning from March for all customers and introducing specialized affiliate services in connection with NongHyup Financial Group affiliates.

NongHyup Bank plans to set up a super smartphone application that allows users to experience all financial services with one app by implementing full banking services by 2024.