SEOUL, April 19 (Korea Bizwire) — Major South Korean lender Woori Bank has launched a drive to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) banker. The bank said recently that it had signed a business agreement with LionRocket, a local tech startup specializing in deep learning-based image synthesis technologies, for development of the AI banker. The AI [...]
SEOUL, April 16 (Korea Bizwire) – The cryptocurrency turnover in South Korea has more than doubled over the past month, a market tracker said Friday, as retail investors scramble to the virtual currency amid the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. The combined turnover of 14 cryptocurrency exchanges in Asia’s fourth-largest economy came to US$21.63 billion [...]
SEOUL, April 15 (Korea Bizwire) — Citigroup said Thursday it will exit consumer banking operations in 13 markets including South Korea as part of its global business reorganization. The U.S. banking giant opened its first branch in South Korea in 1967 and launched Citibank Korea Inc. in 2004 after acquiring KorAm Bank. The group announced [...]
SEOUL, April 15 (Korea Bizwire) — A recent surge in international cash transfers to gain profits from arbitrage between Bitcoin prices overseas and in South Korea, where the so-called ‘kimchi premium’ is added to boost the price of Bitcoin, has South Korean banks on alert. Ffive major banks — KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Hana, Woori and [...]
SEOUL, April 15 (Korea Bizwire) — The amount of investment in South Korean startups touched a record high in 2020 amid hopes of high returns and policy support, a state-run lender said Thursday. A total of 4.3 trillion won (US$3.85 billion) was invested in startups last year, up from 4.2 trillion won a year earlier [...]
SEOUL, April 14 (Korea Bizwire) — South Koreans’ overseas stock transactions touched a new high in the first quarter of the year on brisk investment in U.S. tech firms, data showed Wednesday. Local investors’ trading of overseas shares was valued at US$128.51 billion in the January-March period, up 96.5 percent from three months earlier, according [...]
SEOUL, April 12 (Korea Bizwire) — Investment funds in South Korea that consider environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors in investment decisions are emerging as a hot trend in the nation’s financial industry. The number of financial products that are classified as equity ESG funds among domestic public offering funds as of Thursday totaled 36 [...]
SEOUL, April 9 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s top institutional investor National Pension Service (NPS) said Friday it will raise the ceiling for the portion of its “strategic” investment in local stocks, a move to help ease the fund’s selling spree to meet its stockholding target. Under the latest decision, the ceiling for the share [...]
SEOUL, April 7 (Korea Bizwire) — Foreign investors have been on a buying spree of South Korean stocks so far this month, picking up a net 2.2 trillion won (US$1.97 billion) worth of local shares, reversing their selling trend earlier this year. Offshore investors have been net buyers of local shares for five straight sessions [...]
SEOUL, April 1 (Korea Bizwire) — K-Bank, South Korea’s first internet-only bank, said Thursday its customers and deposits grew exponentially in the first quarter of the year amid the coronavirus outbreak. The number of customers stood at 3.91 million as of the end of March, 1.72 million more than three months earlier, said the lender, [...]