Taking Steps to be
Leading Bank
- Kookmin Bank marketing geared to be the peoples' bank

Kookmin Bank has stated this year will be the year for achieving to be a representative bank in Korea by becoming a convenient, strong and wise bank to be truly a bank for the people, the bank announced recently.
The bank feels that this year would be a crucial year for its vision to be a leading bank in the country due to stiffening of the competition among banks joined by foreign banks, bank officials said.
Kookmin plans to face the competition with a strengthened marketing strategy keyed to rediscovering the potential of its existing customers including individuals, SMEs, large corporations and expand markets for its financial products.
The bank will upgrade its services not only to VIP customers but also to long-term customers to raise the level of their dealings with the bank and improve their satisfaction level with the bank's services.
The bank also plans to diversify its products to meet the diverse needs of its customers including non-bank financial products.
To cope with diverse banking needs for its corporate customers, the bank will offer such additional services as foreign exchange, B2B and other products and services so that they would be able to expand their activities.
Bank officials noted also that Kookmin would try to rebuild the portfolio of its corporate assets by strengthening its product development and service offerings to corporate customers.
Internally, the bank will continue to improve non-effective sectors and streamline its organizational culture through a true integration and strengthen its soundness to improve their competitiveness.
In order to maximize the profits of branch operations, the bank will build up culture around jobsites so that every organizational capability will be focused on branches with customer contacts.
Kookmin Bank President and CEO Kang Jeong-won attracted a lot of attention these days with his announcement that Kookmin will still be a leading and top bank in Korea amid the talk about what would Korea be like after 10 years has been getting popular.
Kookmin's public image has been that it has more than 200 trillion won in assets and customers totaling over 25 million, more than half of the country's population. But this alone cannot explain in full CEO Kang's ambition and banking experts' forecasts.
The bank's retail loans accounted for 32.7 percent of the total in the country, more than double 12.2 percent for the second place bank, 62 percent of the housing subscription product market, 58 percent of installment fund putting together those of 6 largest banks and 44 percent of bancassurance sold by 8 large banks. The bank is in the second place in its market share of corporate loans provided by banks, the third place in syndication loans and the first place in won/dollar future exchange transactions for two years in a row, showing off its strong presence in the corporate banking sector.
The bank came on top in the Internet banking service, too, by becoming the first bank in the country to use chip mobile banking, dominating over half of the market. Kookmin was the first to introduce in-company satellite broadcasting system and the first to introduce electronic bankbooks, which expanded to total 180,000 in just 4 months.
Reminding that no bank can be a top bank for over 10 years continuously, CEO Kang said Kookmin should remain the top bank in the country a decade later, too. He also stressed the moral side of the bank's operations, saying that ethical side of the management should be strengthened to establish just corporate culture. He also called for every one working for the bank to work hard to boost the bank's customer satisfaction rate to the mid-level of all banks in the country by the end of this year and to the top level next year. nw