NACF Spins off IB Center

Center to beef up its overseas operations including tie ups with IB firms in Asia to expand IB activities

Nonghyup's financial service division warrants a full treatment as a national commercial bank, not just part of the farmers'cooperative's organization dedicated to farmers welfare around the country with its financial assets reaching 169 trillion won and expansion of its financial services.
This year, NH Finance headed by President Jeong Yong-keun, will start off-shooting the different financial sectors in the division such as investment banking, credit card and insurance as independent affiliates.
To head start the project, Nonghyup will use the first two initials of its English name will be turned into a financial holding company tentatively named as NH Financial Holding Co.
In December, last year, the National Agricultural Cooperatives Federation(NACF) reorganized its structure as a holding company. Under the reorganization plan, the insurance unit will be the first one to be a spin-off after further strengthening its business capacity.
Tentatively named as 'NH Insurance'it will have an insurance center in the 16 regional headquarters of NH with each center given the right to supervise all the insurance business of NH Insurance in their given regions. The scale of the mutual aid provider team under the centers will be reinforced greatly from now.
The credit card business is also scheduled to become an independent affiliate within the several years with the tentative name of 'NH Card'with its staff reinforced. They will set up an affiliate of a credit card operation in Seoul first for experimental purposes and then let it expand nationwide if the experiment is a success.
NH's plan to offshoot its credit card operation will be helped by the similar moves by commercial banks such as Kookmin and Hana banks to make their credit card operations independent from their operations.
The IB sector has also been made an independent affiliate following its reorganization and move into other building this year to prepare for an independent operation. The entire officers and staff totaling 270 will move into the IB Center building now in Seoul. On Feb. 28, an inauguration ceremony took place for spinning off the NHIB Center as an independent unit combining all IB departments. Located near the West Gate NACF main building, the IB center will house the offices of the core divisions, such as Financial Projects, IB Operations, and Capital Management. NH officials said within three years, insurance, and credit card will all be affiliates as independent corporations and turned them into financial holding companies. Under the revised Nonghyup laws, insurance, credit card and IB operations will be turned into independent affiliates in that order, they said.
They said NACF will actively participate in the nationwide projects as a major M&A financial manager and also will increase treasury loans and investments to enter the global IB market.
For the advancement in the global market, NACF will work toward the establishment of overseas IB corporations and make effort to form coalitions with newly rising IB companies in Asia. NACF will also participate in SOC operations for safe treasury loans and investments and in the industry to discover new environment friendly energy sources.
With the opening of IB Center, NACF will increase joint operations with NH Investment Securities Co., NH Futures, and NH-CA Asset Management to optimize the effort. At the opening ceremony for the IB Center were Chairman Choi, Jeong Yong-keun, President & CEO Banking & Insurance, Ku Gi-in, president of the IB Center, among some 100 executives and employees.
The NH Finance Division will have the individual customer section and corporate customer section to step up the work on expanding deposit accounts. Nonghyup will also continue to push for the targets that were to be accomplished last year including the take over of a capital company to beef up its consumer finance operation. NH will also step up its effort to launch overseas operations this year, which it aimed to achieve last year, by setting up branches in strategic financial centers overseas.
The financial assets of Nonghyup zoomed to 169 trillion won in merely three years from 2004 when it amounted to 130 trillion won. At the end of 2005, it totaled 140 trillion won, and 157 trillion won at the end of 2006. Nonghyup's financial operation has become strong enough to compete with national commercial banks. nw

President Jeong Yong-keun of Banking and Insurance of NACF.