Kyobo Life Insurance CEO Shin Chang-jae

By Lee Hyo-sik
Staff Reporter

Kyobo Life Insurance CEO Shin Chang-jae places top priority on satisfying customers and achieving a common goal through good teamwork, saying creating a virtuous cycle among clients, employees, investors, communities and other stakeholders is the key to the sustainable growth.

``Business starts with customers. As a top manager, I pay the greatest attention to what happens in the field. We must satisfy customers to boost revenue and profit, which in turn will benefit customers, employees, shareholders and all other stakeholders, establishing a virtuous cycle,'' Shin told The Korea Times in an email interview.

The CEO said all members of an organization should be motivated and work toward a concerted goal if it wants to succeed, stressing that good teamwork is an essential element in a successful business.

Kyobo is synonymous with the history of Korean life insurance. Shin Yong-ho, the late father of CEO Shin, established the company in 1958 as Daehan Kyoyuk Insurance. The insurer's total asset, which was only 22 million won in its first year, expanded to 53.2 trillion won as of December last year.

Shin, who quit as a medical professor at Seoul National University to inherit his father's company, took the helm with a mandate to turn Kyobo into one of Asia's leading life insurers.

``Leaders should be able to motivate members of an organization to perform their best. Performance here means not only handsome profits, but also other tangible and intangible results beneficial to the company, employees and customers. They are the ones who execute strategies and achieve good outcome,'' the CEO said, stressing leaders should learn and study on a continuous basis to become a better one.

Touching on Kyobo's mid-and-long term growth strategy, Shin said the life insurer will strive to achieve 100 trillion won in assets under management and one trillion won in profit by 2015, adding the goal is achievable, given the robust growth that the company has accomplished for the past five decades.

``We will further strengthen six-sigma, customer satisfaction and customer relations management to turn Kyobo into a more efficient and profitable business entity that highly values the well-being of customers and society. By gaining trust from customers and communities, we will be able to achieve sustainable growth for many years to come,'' he said.

The past 50 years involved a history of challenge and passion that Kyobo has spent with its customers, the CEO said, adding it should make a leap forward to last more than a century and be respected by the community.

``Kyobo has emerged a respected member of Korea's corporate community over the past five decades and our social responsibility has become greater. To become an admired centennial corporation, we will make more efforts to care not only for our interests, but also those of other stakeholders,'' Shin stressed.

leehs@koreatimes.co.kr