When Han Dong-woo took office as chairman of Shinhan Financial Group two years ago, his main concern was how to turn the company into one with sustainable growth in the global financial industry characterized by firms’ fast rises and falls.

He found the answer by setting humanitarian finance as its core business philosophy and “planting the DNA of compassionate finance” into Shinhan employees.

He created the slogan “compassionate finance,” meaning warm, customer-based professionalism in finance, to regain trust from customers and to seek unity among employees.

Under this corporate philosophy, the group has expanded low-interest loans to small and medium-sized companies and the poor, while promoting shared growth with its partners including subcontractors.

The group has also introduced financial consulting centers and financial revival programs to help financially strapped customers.

Before chairman Han took office, the nation’s major banking group had been tarnished by unprecedented internal discord among top executives, which bank officials said led to the group’s worst-ever crisis.

Upon inauguration, the chairman launched humanitarian finance committees in the group’s affiliates in 2012 to monitor whether their products, services, risk management and sales can generate customers’ profits and meet their needs.

Successfully securing both customers’ trust and the profit, the group has become the only financial group in Korea to survive the two financial crises that hit the country in 1997 and 2008 without state subsidies.

Shinhan had the highest profit among financial groups in the last quarter of last year, at a time when some big-name construction firms collapsed due to financial woes.

Under Han’s leadership, Shinhan continued to wield its global reputation.

Shinhan was rated No. 1 in Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the last four consecutive years. It also became the only Korean company to place among the top 100 global firms of sustainable management, awarded at the 2013 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

British financial magazine The Banker also assessed Shinhan’s brand power as No. 1 domestically and No. 51 globally.

“It takes years and decades to change a deep-rooted system and dominant paradigm. But I have trust in (compassionate finance) as Shinhan’s only way, no matter how long it takes,” Han said.

By Chung Joo-won  (joowonc@heraldcorp.com)