SEOUL, Sept. 30 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s financial regulatory body said Friday it will soon decide whether to issue a permit for the nation’s first online-only bank. Two consortiums, one led by KT Corp. and the other by Kakao Corp., are preparing to enter the banking sector with their technical expertise. KT’s consortium submitted [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 23 (Korea Bizwire) – Tens of thousands of unionized bank workers in South Korea staged a walkout Friday against the expansion of a performance-based pay system in the nation’s financial industry. There were no reports yet of major disruptions in banking services across the country, as the participation rate was apparently lower than [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 21 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s chief financial regulator called on the nation’s umbrella bank union Wednesday to withdraw its plan to go on a general strike later this week, saying such a collective action will never win public support especially at a time when the local banking industry faces a “life-or-death” crisis. [...]
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, June 14 (Korea Bizwire) – A ruthless employer has chosen to pay his foreign workers their overdue wages with 22,000 coins. Foreign workers from Uzbekistan who worked at a construction site in South Gyeongsang Province’s Changnyeong County were given unpaid wages of 4.4 million won on June 9, all in coins. The builder gave them [...]
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, May 9 (Korea Bizwire) – More than 1,800 jobs vanished from the financial sector in 2015. Financial institutions have downsized their workforces due to weakening profit margins and the increasing ubiquity of fintech and automated branches, which require fewer employees. According to the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), the number of employees at financial institutions [...]
SEOUL, May 4 (Korea Bizwire) — The chief of the South Korean banks’ association said on Wednesday that the ongoing industrial restructuring will have little impact on local commercial banks, citing their minor exposure to financially troubled companies. In a press conference held in Germany on the sidelines of the 49th Asia Development Bank annual [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 9 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korean banks’ lending to large companies fell in the first nine months of the year amid a protracted economic slump, despite an upturn in overall loans, industry data showed Monday. Outstanding loans extended by Shinhan Bank, Kookmin Bank and four other major lenders reached 1,035.85 trillion won (US$898.6 [...]