South Korea’s banking sector is expected to no longer guarantee job security the way it once did. This year, the industry is seeing a mass exodus of its workforce, with lenders offering lucrative early retirement packages to accelerate digitalization of banking services and trim down their physical operations for the transition, data showed Sunday. The Korea Herald looked at individual employment data from six banks released this year. Along with Citibank Korea shutting down its consume

Shinhan Financial Group Chairman Cho Yong-byoung vowed to contribute to South Korea’s swift transition into a carbon neutral society with the financial giant‘s net-zero goals at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, the firm said Thursday. The chief of Korea’s second-largest banking group by total assets on late Wednesday introduced Shinhan Financial’s own plans to achieve carbon neutrality in finance dubbed the “zero carbon drive

While South Koreans’ real estate transactions remain frozen due to a lack of supply and government loan restrictions, transactions of local land and properties by foreigners who face relatively relaxed rules in the first nine months of this year hit an all-time high, data showed Wednesday. With foreigners’ purchases of high-value apartments continuing to make headlines in the news, coupled with the government requesting stricter loan restrictions against locals -- in a bid to curb

South Korea’s JB Financial Group said Tuesday it has joined a UN-convened alliance of global banks, committed to aligning their portfolios with net-zero emissions by 2050. The holding group of regional Jeonbuk Bank and Kwangju Bank said its latest move to join the Net-Zero Banking Alliance was to uphold its environmental, sustainable and governance goals. The alliance represents more than a third of global banking assets, with a total of 87 members from 36 countries, including investme

Blockchain and information technology consulting firm Baobab Partners will launch a nonfungible token marketplace on Thursday, the firm said Tuesday. The platform, named Baobab NFT, can be accessed through the firm’s blockchain portal and website at bao-bab.co.kr. Through the marketplace, Ethereum- and Klaytn-based NFTs can be issued, sold and purchased with crypto and NFT wallets MetaMask and Kaikas. Klaytn is Korea’s No. 1 mobile messenger operator Kakao Corp.’s global bloc

Highlighting the latest government data reflecting a recovery in industrial output and retail sales in September, the nation’s top economic policymaker on Friday expressed anticipation of a rebound in private spending for the remaining months of the year. “Despite the obstacles cast by the fourth wave of the COVID-19 virus, the nation’s industrial output in September rose over 1 percent and the overall economy activity has shown improvement compared with August,” Deputy

South Korea’s economy has expanded at a slower-than-expected pace in the July-September period due to lackluster private consumption despite recovery in exports, central bank data showed Tuesday. The economy grew 0.3 percent in the third quarter, compared with a 0.8 percent growth in the second quarter and the corresponding figure of 1.7 percent in the first quarter, preliminary data released by the Bank of Korea showed. The third quarter reading falls short of the BOK’s Se

South Korea ranked No. 4 among 38 global economies in terms of the percentage of its population living on less than half the median disposable income, data showed Monday, reflecting significant wealth disparities in the country. According to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, Asia’s fourth-largest economy posted a relative poverty rate of 16.7 percent in 2018-2019, the fourth-highest rate among its 38 member nations. In general, most OECD members are high-income ec

South Korea has been alarmed by rising inflation due to surging fuel prices and is likely to cut taxes on oil and liquefied natural gas by 15 percent and 2 percent, respectively, to ease some upward pressure, sources said Sunday. The government has been reviewing various measures to alleviate inflationary pressure after the nation’s central bank said that producer prices in September saw the largest on-year gain in a decade. The producer price index, a barometer of future consumer inflat

South Korea’s KB Financial Group said Thursday its net profit in the January-September period came to 3.7 trillion won ($3.14 billion), eclipsing last year’s annual net profit. KB’s net profit in the first nine months of the year jumped 31.1 percent on-year and surpassed last year’s annual net profit of 3.4 trillion won, hitting a record high for the cited period. Onlookers said that the banking group is likely to see a record high for fiscal 2021 as well, likely surpas

Shinhan Bank said Thursday it has opened an office in Hungary, becoming the first South Korean commercial lender to enter the central European country. The flagship lender under the nation’s No. 1 banking group by assets said it was granted the license to operate by the Hungarian National Bank in September and opened the office Tuesday. It also marked Shinhan’s latest overseas market entry since the launch of its subsidiary in Mexico in 2018. The new office is expected to bolste

South Korea’s KB Kookmin Bank said Wednesday that it has acquired the remaining stake in Prasac Microfinance Institution, to wholly own Cambodia’s largest microfinance deposit-taking firm. KB Kookmin had acquired 70 percent stake in Prasac Microfinance for $603.4 million from Sri Lanka-based nonbanking lender LOLC Holdings in April 2020, becoming the majority and largest shareholder of the institution. The price of the 30 percent stake which KB Kookmin recently acquired has yet t

Virtual reality and augmented reality videos alongside designs on streets, walls and human bodies will be eligible to be registered as intellectual property in South Korea from Thursday, the nation’s IP office said Tuesday. According to the Korean Intellectual Patent Office, the newly revised law would protect digitally produced designs with various purposes including communication, medical and security. Previously, such designs were able to be filed as IP when they formed part of items.

South Korea’s Hana Bank on Monday said it has teamed up with the nation’s top automakers Hyundai Motor and Kia alongside fintech startup Finda to develop financial services and products tied to connected car technologies. A connected car refers to a car equipped with internet access, usually a wireless local area network. This allows the car to share internet access and data with other devices inside and outside the vehicle. Though details are currently in the works, Hana plans to

The state-run Korea Development Bank extended or guaranteed loans worth a combined 10.3 trillion won ($8.7 billion) for fossil fuel projects in the last decade, data showed Friday, reflecting growing concerns about greenwashing in the nation’s financial sector. From 2011 to 2020, the KDB extended loans worth a total of 6.9 trillion won and guaranteed a further 3.3 trillion won worth of loans for natural gas or oil projects, data submitted by the state-run bank to ruling Democratic Party

South Korea’s monetary policy chief on Friday denied that the central bank’s latest rate hike was aimed at boosting the government’s real estate measures, which have failed to cool down the nation’s heated property market. In a parliamentary audit held Friday, Lee refuted rumors that the Bank of Korea’s first pandemic-era rate hike carried out in August, was a move pressured by the government. The latest rate hike by 25 basis points to 0.75 percent ended more th

South Korea’s central bank said Thursday it has decided to join a global movement of financial regulators to set up standards for stablecoins, saying it would adopt the rules to the local market once they are introduced. Stablecoins are a form of cryptocurrency designed to have a stable value tied to traditional government-backed currencies, or to a commodity such as gold, to dodge the volatilities that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have. The Bank of Korea’s announcement com

Global investment bank JPMorgan said Thursday it has decided to expand its commercial banking business in South Korea by launching a new team focused on financing midcap companies. The banking giant has appointed Kim Min-sik, former head of the global corporate division at Standard Chartered Bank Korea, to lead its newly established corporate client banking & specialized industries team. In Korea, businesses with total assets between 500 billion won ($421.1 million) and 10 trillion w

South Korea’s economy added the largest number of jobs in more than seven years in September, government data showed Wednesday, with officials citing a surge in contactless services backed by digitalization of industries and high vaccination rate as key catalysts. The economy added 671,000 jobs on-year to 27.68 million in September, Statistics Korea data showed. This marked the largest job growth since March 2014, when the economy added 726,000 jobs and also the seventh consecutive month

South Korea’s monetary policy chief said Tuesday the central bank may carry out its second rate hike in the pandemic-era next month, after deciding to keep the rate steady at 0.75 percent until then. “When we made our rate hike decision in August, we mentioned that we would adjust the level of our monetary easing in tandem with the pace of the economic recovery,” Bank of Korea Gov. Lee Ju-yeol said in a briefing tied to Tuesday’s rate-setting meeting. “We have d