As part of its ongoing efforts to win back its former glory as the nation’s leading bank, KB Kookmin Bank said it would focus on reforming the operating management system of its branches.

The bank, which struggled last year with customer information leaks and leadership feuds, has displayed signs of recovery this year ― beating market champion Shinhan Bank in profits in the first quarter and downsizing its organization in the second.

Its umbrella banking group, KB Financial Group, also launched last month KB Insurance, the renewed version of LIG Insurance, and is set to expand its relatively weak nonbanking sector.

“It is now time to place more focus on our customers and our actual business fields,” Yoon Jong-kyoo, chairman of KB Financial Group and president of its flagship KB Kookmin Bank, told bank employees in a monthly assembly on Wednesday.

His key target is to improve the process at bank windows, hoping to boost the bank employees’ work efficiency and to reduce customer complaints.

“In the upcoming personnel appointment, we will allocate more manpower to highly congested branches, by order of necessity,” he said.

“As for conventional employees, we will make sure to reallocate them so that they may spend more time on in-depth tasks such as loan counseling.”

The bank will also select specialized strategic bases among its 33 regional headquarters, where it is to concentrate professional functions such as corporate banking and asset management to these strategic bases, according to Yoon.

“Convenience factors such as information technology may count, but long-term trust is what actually initiates a customer-bank relationship,” he said.

KB Financial Group recorded 605 billion won ($541 million) in net profit in the first quarter this year, up 68.4 percent from the same period last year, thus beating Shinhan Financial Group for the first time in six years.

By Bae Hyun-jung (tellme@heraldcorp.com)