Ban Young-hee serves as director of the Financial Supervisory Service, and also as deputy head of Fn Hub Korea.

By Ban Young-hee

What are the priority tasks that Korea must carry out to become a financial hub in Northeast Asia? What are the key factors for Korean financial institutions to grow into global players?

Improvement of financial regulations and the supervisory system and the development of Korea’s financial market would easily top the to-do list, but in my view, the task of attracting global finance experts requires an equal amount of attention and execution.

More than in any other industries, the success of the financial sector is built on people, and the competitiveness of individual financial companies greatly depends on the size of its finance talents.

To attract financial talent to Korea, Fn Hub Korea has organized an annual job fair in developed financial markets overseas having a large pool of financial experts.

In the summer of 2010, we proposed to large Korean financial companies to co-host a job fair overseas. The idea was readily accepted as the companies felt the need to secure global talent from abroad.

The first Finance Job Fair was jointly organized by Fn Hub Korea and 13 Korean financial companies and held in September 2010 in New York, home to Wall Street, leading financial companies, and many of the world’s top universities, and in Los Angeles, which boasts a large community of Korean Americans and leading schools.

The job fair turned out to be a far greater success than expected. A combined 636 applicants attended and about 70 received job offers.

Six of the successful hires are now working in Korea and the others are expected to start work after completing their studies. Most of the job fair participants were graduates from leading MBA schools in the U.S. and many had a career in global investment banking.

The job fair was well received by both participating companies and job applicants. For companies lacking a global network or experience in hiring international finance experts, the event was a good opportunity to meet and hire experts from a large pool.

For job applicants, the job fair was a channel through which they could get recruiting information simultaneously from several financial companies and get interviewed. The six hired persons are working in specialized fields such as international finance, financial engineering or marketing, and most of them expressed satisfaction with their jobs.

Despite its success, Fn Hub Korea’s first job fair left much to be desired. Due to the short period of promotion overseas, many who failed to get informed of the event in time could not participate. Jobs that were offered were limited to the Korean market so many outstanding applicants wishing to work at an overseas branch outside of Korea could not be hired.

The fact that all of the hired people were ethnic Koreans and none of them were foreign applicants is also regrettable.

So for the next job fair, we will strive to improve on these limitations. This year, Fn Hub Korea will engage a larger number of Korean financial companies and have them hire people for their overseas branches as well as foreigners for their domestic offices.

We will also promote the event well in advance to attract more participants. We also hope to organize a job fair in Europe if there is high demand from European participants.

Fn Hub Korea will organize its second annual job fair in late September 2011 in New York and Los Angeles. The ultimate goal is to promote the event as a window for Korea’s financial companies to attract financial talent from overseas.

* In 2010, 13 Korean financial companies participated in the job fair: Kookmin Bank, KB Investment Securities, KB Asset Management, Daewoo Securities, MiraeAsset Securities, Samsung Securities, Samsung Life, Samsung Asset Management, Shinhan Bank, Woori Bank, Woori Investment Securities, Hana Bank and Hana Daetoo Securities. For more information on the job fair, please contact the Financial Business Environment Improvement Team at Fn Hub Korea (02-3145-7156).