SEOUL, June 24 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea on Friday said it will use all means to stabilize the local financial market following the unexpected result of the historic British referendum to leave the European Union. As the world’s fifth-largest economy got ready to leave the 28-member economic bloc, South Korea’s financial market suffered a [...]
SEOUL, Jun. 21 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s top mobile messenger operator Kakao Corp. said Monday its mobile payment platform Kakao Pay currently has more than 10 million users, roughly 19 months after its launch in the country. Introduced in September 2014 and similar to the world-famous PayPal, users pre-register their credit and debit cards, [...]
SEOUL, June 20 (Korea Bizwire) – Deposit interest rates have fallen so low that consumers can’t even pay a single ATM fee with their annual interest income, and their distress is compounded by the latest policies from the big banks to increase wire transfer and ATM fees. The annual nominal interest rate for a savings [...]
SEJONG, June 16 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea said Thursday that it will apply tighter liquidity regulations on foreign exchange reserves to its banking operations starting next year to strengthen the liquidity positions of local financial institutions. The Ministry of Strategy and Finance said that it will introduce the foreign exchange liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) [...]
SEOUL, June 15 (Korea Bizwire) – A recent study has shown that mobile applications are the most sought-after means of applying for small loans, credit card loans, and even cash advances. Last month, Internet banking company K Bank commissioned a survey from market researcher Macromill Embrain in which 1,000 people between the ages of 25 and [...]
SEOUL, June 15 (Korea Bizwire) – Thanks to poor net interest margins, which have reached the lowest levels in history, Korean banks are suffering from worsening profitability. According to the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), the net interest margin for domestic banks in Q1 2016 was 1.55 percent, which was a 0.08 percent decline from Q1 [...]
SEOUL, May 17 (Korea Bizwire) – Two major foreign banks in South Korea suffered declines in their first-quarter profit due to a lack of growth drivers and declining net interest margins, the companies said Tuesday. In the three months ending March 31, Standard Chartered Bank Korea posted a 22.6 percent on-year drop in its first-quarter [...]
SEOUL, May 10 (Korea Bizwire) – The soundness of Korean banks is significantly lower than those of the US, Canada and North Europe. Risk management failures are contributing to increasing rates of weak credit, and Return on Equity (ROE) is lower than ever. According to KB Financial Group (KBFG), the distressed-debt ratios of banks in [...]
SEOUL, April 25 (Korea Bizwire) – The Korea Exchange (KRX) will develop its own smart beta indices in partnership with Standard and Poor’s (S&P), one of the Big Three credit-rating agencies based in New York. The KRX revealed on April 24 that it clinched a deal with S&P in a joint venture to develop new [...]
SEOUL, April 18 (Korea Bizwire) – Household loans extended by local banks rose at a fast clip in March due to a large increase in mortgage loans, central bank data showed Monday. Outstanding household loans extended by lenders here came to 649 trillion won (US$564.2 billion) as of end-March, up 4.9 trillion won from the [...]