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KB Financial Group launches fixed interest rate
mortgage loans and KB Good Job to find jobs for youths

The KB Financial Group has seen its focus on expanding communications within the group and boosting its management effect pay off in the past year with its selection as winner of the Grand Prize for Management Transparency from the Korea Accountant Society and the 2011 Award for the Business Firm with the Most Excellent Management Structure from the Korea Institute of Corporate Management Structure under the Korea Exchange.
Other coveted awards the financial group won include the Award for Top Bank for Trade Financing, and the Most Beloved Corporate Brand Award in Korea from a number of brand evaluation institutions including the Korea Brand Committee and Korea Consumer Academy. Chairman Euh Yoon-dae, since taking the helm of the management of the group in July last year, formed a special task force to take charge of stabilizing the group's management in an effort to boost its effects through changes and reform. The task force selected 58 areas to work on for the group's change and reform including such areas as personnel and the assignment of responsibility.
Euh himself kept calling on major investors both at home and abroad to explain the direction in which KB Financial is headed under its new vision and expanded communications with the financial market, executives of the group and those related with the KB Financial Group in the past year to let them know the true value of the group.
The financial group believes that its efforts to upgrade its operational capability have paid off, especially in such areas as strengthening its services to large firms, generating new profits, reform in personnel and organization and improving the financials of the group, among others, which naturally have led to boosts in the group's corporate value.
The financial group won the Award for Most Transparent Management for 2011 from the Korea Accountant Society as a result of expanding communications with major investors both at home and abroad. In October last year, Chairman Euh travelled abroad for 20 days to hold investor relations sessions starting with Frankfurt, then on to Paris, then Amsterdam, where ING has its headquarters, then London, Singapore, and Hong Kong. He called on 150 institutional investors in nine cities in seven countries around the world, travelling a total of 37,000 km, the group said.
The financial group has spared no efforts to fulfill its social responsibility, backed up by its healthy structure as a corporation that thinks of the people first. The group set up the KB Financial Public Interest Foundation; launched the housing mortgage loan fund with a fixed annual interest rate of around four percent; launched KB Good Job, a project to create jobs for youths; and is seeking ways to take over a savings bank and reinstall the Public Housing Fund and other activities and projects aimed at making social contributions. The KB Foundation with 20 billion won in funds contributed by major affiliates of the KB Financial Group including Kookmin Bank, KB Card and KB Investment Securities, will be increasing the fund with annual contributions made by its affiliates to the tune of 1 percent of their annual profits until the fund reaches 100 billion won.
The fund will provide money to further education on economy and finance in order to boost public understanding of the subject matter, provide opportunities for those who need financial help to further their education by giving them scholarships and provide funds to various academic researches related to economy and finance to make contributions to the further development of the economy.
Chairman Euh said the group launched the fixed interest rate mortgage loan, whose tenure can be extended every five years for up to 30 years, within the annual range of 4.8 percent to 5.3 percent, to alleviate borrowers'fears of increases in the interest rates on loans and those who have trouble obtaining loans.
We want to ease their problems by providing loans with a fixed interest rate of around 4 percent per annum, said the top manager of the group.
The financial group also kicked off the KB Good Job program by hiring eight graduates of special and meister high schools for the first time to let the country know that high school graduates can get jobs with financial institutions in Korea just like university graduates.
The project aims at connecting SMEs with the high school graduates who need jobs as part of the group's support for a social campaign to find jobs for unemployed youths based on ability and not on academic achievements.
The website of the project will post job vacancies at SMEs who are their clients as they are reported by Kookmin's more than 1,200 bank branches across the country. nw

Chairman Euh Yoon-dae of KB Financial Group.

Photo on Courtesy of KB Financial Group