KEIC Doing All It Can to Upgrade Services
- Aimed at small exporters offering one-stop window service

Korea Export Insurance Corp. is on the path of upgrading its role to take charge of all matters involved with exports from start to finish as an integrated export support organization offering one-stop window service in the country, Kim Song-woong, president of the state-run company said recently.
The company should place itself at the forefront of export battlegrounds and build a support system for export firms so that they may not lose their competitiveness.
Under the system, export firms would be able to leave all work involved with exports from finding importers to the collection of export proceeds to KEIC and focus solely on market exploration and technology development.
President Kim, who spent all of his career with the export insurance business, took over the company in last May. He started his career with Korea Reinsurance Corp., predecessor of KEIC 36 years ago and during these time, KEIC has grown to become the 5th largest official export guarantee organization.
But President Kim is not satisfied with it.
"If we are satisfied with good in good to great, we can't be great," he explained. "We have to move ahead all the time not satisfied with the present if we want to move forward and become better," he continued.
Kim demands changes and reform all the time, saying that state-run firms now have to compete with private firms. He said they have to increase productivity through reform of systems and the development of new products aimed at providing support to exports.
In order to bring changes, employees themselves would have to change with pride and passion.
KEIC launched the overseas credit collection business recently, what is a display of its plan to expand its scope of business ranging from credit investigation to the collection of export proceeds. It has taken two years to prepare to launch the new business area and since its launching, the company received 92 cases of collection from 72 firms totaling 44.1 billion won in amount and the company has been able to collect 900 million won so far. According to a survey conducted by KEIC, about 14.7 percent of export firms experienced hard time collecting their export proceeds in the past three years. Small firms, in particular, have had no where to rely on to collect their export proceeds except keep sending bills.
But KEIC through its network of over 30 collection agencies have been providing a top-quality collection services. Kim has been paying a special attention to small export firms; he visits them twice every month to see what he can do to help them.
He set up the office of small export firms in the company in responds to claims that they need more information. The office has been helping small export firms to find from basic information to do business to coming up with various measures to cope with difficulties.
Kim believes that small export firms should do well to uplift national exports. This is especially the case with small export firms located in provinces around the country. If they do well, it will uplift regional economies and national exports, Kim thinks.
This is why KEIC allocated 43 percent of its guarantees to small export firms amounting to 19.8 trillion won. He will continue his firm's support to small exporters until the ratio become 50:50 with large export firms.
"Compared to large firms, small firms have weak financial structures, which is why they need more KEIC guarantees to supplement their financial structures," Kim said.
KEIC's continuous effort in this area paid off with the firm taking the top place in the evaluation of policies and their results conducted by the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy in July. MOCIE evaluated the satisfaction level of its 41 major tasks and the export insurance system came on top.
"Every one of its employees worked hard to help small exporters and KEIC will continue with its current support to small exporters by lowering its threshold to them with customer-oriented management," Kim said. nw