SEOUL, April 21 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s credit card companies are seeking to apply the iris scanner adopted by Samsung Electronics Co.’s Galaxy S8 smartphones on mobile transactions, industry sources said Friday, lauding the feature’s security compared with fingerprints and passwords. According to the sources, Samsung Card Co. is seeking to apply the iris [...]
SEOUL, April 13 (Korea Bizwire) – Last year, South Korea’s banking industry saw its employee count drop by 2,248 to 114,775, and 175 bank branches closed down – the biggest drop ever – with the number of ATMs falling to 48,474 from 51,115. The trends are reflective of the inevitable prevalence of internet banking. Bank [...]
SEOUL, March 31 (Korea Bizwire) – The Export-Import Bank of Korea, one of South Korea’s state-run policy banks, suffered a net loss of 1.46 trillion won (US$1.3 billion) last year, hit by higher provisions against its loans extended to the country’s ailing shipbuilding industry. It was the first time that the bank reported an annual [...]
SEOUL, March 28 (Korea Bizwire) – Banks in South Korea sharply downsized their headcounts, branches and automated instruments in 2016 to cut costs amid rapid growth in mobile and Internet banking, government data showed Tuesday. The combined workforce of lenders operating in the country stood at 114,775 as of the end of last year, down [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 29 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea said Thursday it will revise regulations on the capital market in a bid to foster mega-sized investment banks (IBs) here modeled after Goldman Sachs. The Financial Services Commission (FSC) notified the public of the revision plan in which local brokerages with a huge capital base will be [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 26 (Korea Bizwire) – The implementation of flextime – a workplace arrangement that allows employees to choose their working hours – is quickly expanding across the local banking industry. KB Kookmin Bank currently has 45 branches that have adopted a flextime system, allowing employees to delay their work hours by an hour or [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 19 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea will relax a regulation on the capital ratio of local banks this week in a move to reduce their financial burden, the country’s finance regulator said Monday. The Financial Services Commission (FSC) will allow them to designate their loan-loss reserves as common capital stock under the revised [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 13 (Korea Bizwire) – The board of directors at seven major commercial banks decided Monday to implement a performance-based pay system – a controversial wage system introduced under the troubled Park Geun-hye administration. The seven institutions are Woori Bank, Shinhan Bank, KB KookminBank, KEB Hana Bank, SC Cheil Bank, and Citibank. Officials have [...]
SEOUL, May 10 (Korea Bizwire) – CoCo bonds, or contingent convertible bonds, are fixed-income instruments that are equity-convertible in cases of pre-specified trigger events. Despite their liability-like properties, they are classified as assets, which is prompting many banks to issue CoCo bonds as means of expanding capital. So technically, they’re asset-convertible debt. Major Korean banks, [...]
SEOUL, Feb.18 (Korea Bizwire) – With the adoption of a new account transfer system and Individual Savings Accounts (ISA), banks are going all out to attract clients with various giveaways. Industry analysts note that Shinhan Bank is currently running a promotion in which customers will have a chance to win a Hyundai Avante. Clients who [...]