South Korea‘s Hana Financial Group announced Monday its support for the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) and said that it has joined the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, as part of its efforts to bolster ESG value in its management. The WEPs is a joint initiative by UN Women and UN Global Compact to promote women’s empowerment in the workplace and community. Hana said it will expand gender equality in its workplace by providing additional promotion and education opportunities f

An employee at Woori Bank embezzled 490 million won ($380,000) earlier this year, reports said Thursday, dampening the lender’s struggle to rebuild its reputation after a separate 60 billion won employee theft was uncovered last month. The employee, whose identity was withheld, stole the money by withdrawing from automatic teller machines from mid-January to early February. Woori recently found out about the theft through internal auditing. The bank detected irregular activities in relat

Citigroup’s Korean unit Citibank Korea unveiled its strategy to focus on corporate banking at a town hall meeting held last week in Seoul, the bank said Thursday. According to the bank, the new strategy aims to enhance corporate banking capabilities, increase synergy among its core businesses, and protect customers during the wind-down process of its retail banking divisions. The bank said last October that it will shut down its consumer banking units and focus more on its corporate custo

South Korea’s financial authorities recently returned over 61.4 billion won ($48.84 million) owed to Iran’s Dayyani Group, the amount that was stolen in an embezzlement scheme here between late 2012 and 2018, sources said Tuesday. The policymaking Financial Services Commission has returned most of the total 73 billion won owed to Dayyani’s consumer electronics arm, Entekhab, as compensation over the Iranian business’ failed takeover of Daewoo Electronics back in 2010.

Regulators seek to classify fractional investment platforms as securities traders, warn investors of weak measures for protection

South Korea's foreign reserves shrank for the second straight month in April as the strong dollar resulted in a fall in converted value of non-dollar holdings and the government unloaded the greenback to defend the local currency, central bank data showed Wednesday. The country's foreign reserves stood at $449.3 billion as of end-April, down $8.51 billion from the previous month, according to the data provided by the Bank of Korea (BOK). This marked the second straight month of on-month declines

FSS, lender failed to spot one of the biggest bank embezzlements here despite regular audits

National Tax Service has hosted an in-house video contest in which contestants submitted short clips designed to help people understand complicated tax procedures, officials said Friday. The contest was held to make the agency’s digital tax service more user-friendly for those unfamiliar with online services. In videos one to five minutes long, NTS officials introduced key services such as, income tax, corporate tax, and year-end tax adjustment. The winning videos can be watched on the

South Korea’s KB Financial Group outperformed its local rivals, posting a record net profit for the first three months of the year as the banking industry’s overall performance was bolstered by a surge in interest and fee revenue, regulatory filings showed Friday. KB’s net income gained 14.4 percent on-year to 1.45 trillion won ($1.17 billion) in the January-March period. Operating income gained 8.9 percent on-year to 1.9 trillion won in the cited period. Interest income inc

Wealthy Koreans in their 20s, 30s and 40s held an average asset of 6.6 billion won ($5.3 million) with a median annual income of 400 million won as of end-2021, a report showed Wednesday. The report dubbed 2022 Korean Wealth Report compiled by a think tank under Hana Bank was based on a survey of 1,952 Koreans above the age of 19 conducted in December last year. It categorized 708 respondents with personal assets over 1 billion won as “wealthy,” and of the group, 131 people aged bet

South Korean banks are eager to branch out into the trust fund market here, as the country’s demographic shift to an aging society has accelerated demand for it. While it is common in the US and other countries to establish a trust fund for inheritance and keep assets within the family with minimal legal issues, a majority of Korean families still prefer passing on assets through wills. But today, more Koreans are seeking to manage their assets through trust funds, which gives grantors mo

South Korea's foreign reserves shrank in March due to a decline in the dollar-converted value of its assets and unloading of dollars aimed at curbing the local currency's steep descent, central bank data showed Tuesday. The country's foreign reserves stood at $457.81 billion as of end-March, down $3.96 billion from the previous month, according to the data provided by the Bank of Korea (BOK). The BOK attributed the decline to a fall in the dollar-converted value of its asset holdings and "m

Mirae Asset Global Investment’s Canadian subsidiary Horizons ETFs’ assets under management have exceeded 20 trillion won ($16.4 billion), showing more than a sixfold increase in the last decade. On Monday, the Korean asset manager said Horizons ETFs’ assets under management had reached $18.1 billion, or 22.2 trillion won. The figure has increased more than sixfold since Mirae Asset acquired Horizons ETFs in 2011, when it was managing assets of 3.6 trillion won. Horizons ETFs

South Korea’s cryptocurrency market is on a solid path to becoming further legitimized with banks calling for authorization to enter the business and the incoming president pledging to ease regulations. Asia’s fourth-largest economy’s crypto market is booming, with Koreans having invested a total 52.8 trillion won ($43.6 billion) in the digital asset class last year in terms of the combined size of the accounts held by five major crypto exchanges, watchdog Financial Superviso

The Seoul High Court on Thursday temporarily suspended the punishment imposed by financial authorities on Hana Financial Group Chairman-nominee Ham Young-joo for improper sales of derivatives-linked products. The decision follows Ham’s move last week to file an appeal against a lower court’s ruling that found him guilty of the charges. The Seoul High Court accepted an injunction to delay the implementation of the Financial Services Commission’s punishment, imposed in 2020,