Kookmin Bank Sees Tough Road Ahead

Bank kicks off campaign to cope with financial woes while maintaining status as a leading bank with a stable future

Kookmin Bank kicked off the "new START" campaign to strengthen its structure enough to cope with the changing financial environment brought on by the economic crisis sweeping the world and the enforcement of the new Capital Market Consolidation Law from Feb. 4.
The campaign is aimed at effective management, speedy onsite management and creative management, comprising the new management reform to be pushed continuously throughout this year, the bank said.
The bank wants to provide support to the general public and SMEs, create an operation base for the bank through stable fund procurement and solid management to overcome the current financial crisis.
The entire bank will join together in the campaign to make the saving of expenses a unique corporate culture for Kookmin Bank.
The major objectives of the bank are to achieve sound management and secure stable liquidity for risk management. The bank will continue to upgrade customer-oriented systems and introduce leading financial products and services to continue to lead the banking industry.
The bank will also focus on creating synergy among its affiliates as the leader of a financial group with cooperative marketing and desist from intensive competition with rival banks to build its portfolio as a market leader.
The bank feels this year will be a very difficult year for making profits as the economic conditions would grow worse as the global financial crisis will have a large impact on economies both at home and abroad. The banks are to be called on to do their given social duty to prevent the slump in the real economy as the year goes on record as one of the most difficult in recent history.
Accordingly, the bank has decided to focus on managing sound liquidity and credit risk management and raising the soundness of capital in addition to cost savings, rather than enlarging the scale of its assets for the sake of the bank's real interest.
The bank will make its funds available to support the diversified government financial policies and provide loans to creditworthy SME borrowers to the extent that the bank's capital will allow this year.
The bank will concentrate its management on minimizing the loan loss provision through risk management and saving on expenses with effective budget management. The bank will keep a watchful eye on project finance for real estate development projects and small and mid-sized shipbuilders with big potential risk factors as well as strengthen the bank's structure and the maximization of effectiveness through the "new START" management campaign program.
The "new START" management campaign can be termed a new management reform program as it includes "effective management, speedy management, onsite management and creative management" in its objectives.
The major principles of the campaign hinge on the strengthening of the bank's structure, turning crises into opportunities in the financial market and playing a leading role in the stabilization of the national economy and financial market.
The bank has maintained top-level risk management and a high customer satisfaction level by strengthening various systems. The management feels the bank should redouble its efforts for its survival in these difficult times by strengthening its structure once again so that it would be a bank that can withstand any trends in the business cycle. It feels that the bank should have a cost-saving culture at its core. It also feels that the evaluation of productivity should be rational to ensure the fair distribution of resources.
The campaign will make efforts to turn crises into opportunities in the financial market, taking advantage of the bank's most stable conditions and public trust in securing a base for future income sources and new growth opportunities.
Kookmin bank, as the nation's largest and top financial institution, should cope with the current tumult in the financial market to stabilize the financial industry and become a high value-added business. nw

President Kang Chung-won of Kookmin Bank.