SEOUL, Aug. 18 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korean banks saw their net profit decline 9.9 percent on-year in the first half as their non-interest income shrank, data showed Thursday. Their combined net income came to 9.9 trillion won (US$7.5 billion) in the January-June period, compared with a profit of 11 trillion won tallied a year [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 4 (Korea Bizwire) — Banks in South Korea have offered hefty bonuses to their executives on the back of the profits they chalked up by steadily raising interest rates over the past three years, a lawmaker said Wednesday. The aggregate value of bonuses given to the executives at the nation’s top four commercial [...]
SEOUL, July 19 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s top financial regulator said Tuesday it is necessary to ease a rule that restricts industrial businesses from owning banks, saying that such deregulation could generate mega players like BTS in the financial sector. The government restricts industrial capital from being used to purchase stakes in banks and [...]
SEOUL, July 11 (Korea Bizwire) — Short-term saving products are gaining popularity as the stereotype of saving money by pouring money into deposit or installment saving products for more than one year has lost appeal. KakaoBank Corp., a South Korean internet-only bank, released the ’26 week-long installment saving product’ in June 2018, and the number [...]
SEOUL, June 6 (Korea Bizwire) — Unionized workers at South Korea’s state-run banks are taking steps to come up with countermeasures following the Supreme Court’s latest ruling that the peak wage system designed to cut the salaries of senior workers simply on the basis of their age is invalid. The Korean Financial Industry Union plans [...]
SEOUL, June 2 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean financial companies are beefing up efforts to foster their own characters based on judgment that they would help attract more customers. Among the characters that are famous in the banking industry is Shinhan Bank’s polar bear “SOL,” designed based on the motif of the Little Bear that [...]
SEOUL, April 26 (Korea Bizwire) — Controversy is flaring up over banks’ loan-deposit margins as households are suffering from higher interest rate burdens while banks are chalking up huge profits by raising loan interest rates higher than deposit rates. The combined net profit of the nation’s five major financial holding firms — KB Financial Group [...]
SEOUL, April 13 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean banks’ overseas operations saw their earnings jump nearly 62 percent in 2021 from a year earlier on higher interest income, data showed Wednesday. The combined net profit of local lenders’ 204 overseas subsidiaries and branches stood at US$1.17 billion in 2021, up 62.1 percent from a year [...]
SEOUL, March 30 (Korea Bizwire) — Banks in South Korea continued to reduce the number of their offline branches in 2021 as part of efforts to reduce costs amid the expanded use of mobile banking, data showed Wednesday. The number of brick-and-mortar branches run by local banks came to 6,904 as of end-2021, down 311 [...]
SEOUL, March 16 (Korea Bizwire) — Banks in South Korea saw their combined net profit surge about 40 percent in 2021 thanks to increased interest income from the central bank’s rate hikes, data showed Wednesday. The combined net profit of 20 local banks came to 16.9 trillion won (US$13.6 billion) in 2021, up 39.4 percent [...]