Hana Financial Group unveiled a mutual profit boosting plan for its small and medium-sized corporate partners.

The group hosted a mutual prosperity strategy meeting on Tuesday to introduce the plan for its smaller corporate clients in the information technology business.

“Some domestic small and medium enterprises with expertise are facing difficulties from blind preference for foreign hardware and software,” said Kim Jung-tai, the group chairman and chief executive, at the meeting.

“It is very crucial to support them for the sake of diversity of information technology businesses here,” he said.

The plan is two-track, covering financing and offering support for deals. The financial support entails low-rate lending, between 1.8 and 3.0 percent. Tech firms seeking overseas business expansion are additionally offered special consultation in overseas expansion and hedge funds by the group’s experts.

The other pillar, regarding deals, offers more opportunities with Hana Financial Group’s subsidiary companies and affiliates, particularly for the tech SMEs that have successfully supplied tech services to Hana Financial Group. Hana SK Card and Hana Bank are two of the group’s major subsidiaries.

The plan also guarantees “proper prices” for hardware and software products that the SME clientele supply to the group.

“We have been offered many SME support plans, but there were not many plans for information technology SMEs specifically,” said Kim Young-cheol, chief executive of Altibase, an in-memory database management company.

“We hope to see more of such plans from large companies,” he added.

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