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Woori Financial Group Chairman Sohn Tae-seung, center, poses with welfare foundation officials at the bank's headquarters in Seoul, Oct. 10, after donating 100 million won ($83,000) to help nurture digitally talented students in high schools nationwide. Courtesy of Woori Bank
By Lee Kyung-min Nearly 18 percent of taxes levied on Korean individuals and companies operating abroad over the past five years remains uncollected, a lawmaker said Thursday.According to data submitted from the National Tax Service to Rep. Kim Doo-kwan of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, of about 6.4 trillion won ($5.3 billion) in overseas tax duties imposed between 2014 and 2018, over 1.15 trillion won has yet to be collected. By year, the tax agency imposed a total of 1.33 trillion won last year, up from 1.31 trillion won in 2017 and 1.28 trillion won in 2015.Of the amount imposed, 220 billion won remained uncollected in 2018, 189 billion won in 2017 and 169 billion won in 2015.The lawmaker called for more stringent measures to ensure fair taxation, saying more people are suspected of engaging in sophisticated tax avoidance and evasion. “An increasing number of people have evaded tax over the past years and the number is expected to rise,” the lawmaker said. “Intense scrutiny is required to target those who fail to report overseas assets including financial
A small figurine stands on the representations of virtual currency in front of the Libra logo / Korea Times fileNew digital currency to challenge central banksBy Lee Kyung-min Facebook's plan to launch the digital currency Libra in 2020 was up in the air Wednesday, after the alliance of key global corporate backers to manage it showed signs of fraying amid growing scrutiny from regulators across the world, mostly over potential money laundering and tax evasion.PayPal, one among the big name members that signed on for the project, withdrew Oct. 4 from the 28-member Switzerland-based association set up to govern Libra, a move that the Wall Street Journal reported was also being considered by Visa, Mastercard and other financial partners. The temporarily frustrated digital project comes amid growing expectation that the digital currency would significantly undermine the authority of central banks, as fiat currencies in each country would be no match for the tech giant's easy-to-use alternative backed by its 2.7 billion users, over 84 percent of 3.2 billion internet users worldwide. Face
Industrial Bank of Korea (IBK) CEO Kim Do-jin, center, promotes the launch of its online corporate management platform for SMEs, Business Operation eXpert (BOX), at the bank's headquarters in Seoul, August 1. Courtesy of IBKBy Lee Kyung-min Commercial and state-run banks are strengthening online platforms for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), a move to take the upper hand in the market with a relatively handsome profit compared to retail businesses. Over 20,000 business operators have signed up for Business Operation eXpert (BOX), an online corporate management platform for SMEs launched by Industrial Bank of Korea (IBK), August 1. The state lender said some 10,000 business operators joined the platform only 10 days after the launch, and the number has since grown much faster than previously expected. The specifics of the platform was finalized following one-on-one interviews with 2,218 SME CEOs to determine services most in need and measures to boost efficient management. They include management of production, financing, human resources, accounting and marketing, all of wh
Woori Financial Group Chairman Sohn Tae-seungBy Lee Kyung-min Woori Bank and KEB Hana Bank have decided to overhaul their employee evaluation system to prioritize customer satisfaction over profit in a bid to avoid the recurrence of the mis-selling of high-risk products.The decision is a much-belated move to restore lost trust after the financial authorities concluded their mis-selling of a set of high-risk derivatives caused major investor losses. The product in question is a derivative-linked fund (DLF), which is structured to track the performance of underlying assets such as interest rates and government-issued bond yields. Their returns are determined by movements of those underlying assets. The two banks plan to revise employee evaluation criteria measured by Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to give higher grades to those who help boost customer profit. This is a major change from the existing evaluation scheme, under which factors unrelated to banks' profit including service fee income had been largely dismissed. Major revision concerning KPI, a type of performance measuremen
Citibank Korea CEO Park Jin-hei, third from right in the back row and Citibank Korea Executive Vice President Valentin Valderrabano, third from left in the same row, show their palms with other executives and employees at a hand-printing event celebrating the relocation of its consumer banking group to a new office to Young City, a corporate office building in Yeongdeungpo, southwestern Seoul, Oct. 7. Courtesy of Citibank KoreaBy Lee Kyung-min Citibank Korea has relocated its consumer banking group to a new office in south western Seoul, to accelerate digitization and improve workforce efficiency, it said Monday. The group occupies six floors from the eighth through 13th of the Young City south building in Yeongdeungpo, which have been decorated in accordance with the bank's new workplace strategy, Citi Works, designed to best meet workers' task-specific wants and needs. The strategy, based on the virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), a virtualization technology that hosts a desktop operating system on a centralized server in a data center, is the first to be implemented in Korea, ac
By Lee Kyung-min The number of brokerages' branches in Korea has continued to decline over the past few years amid an increase in online trading, data showed Sunday. Data from the Financial Supervisory Service showed the number of branches nationwide stood at 928 as of June in 2019, down 73 from the year before. This is the first time the number has fallen below 1,000. It peaked at 1,816 in 2012 and has since declined to around 1,100 in 2015. Mirae Asset Daewoo, which has 97 branches as of June, led the drop after shutting down nearly 40 percent, or 63 branches, over the past year.Besides the industry leader, KB Securities reduced its number to eight branches. Fewer branches means fewer new hires and more early retirees. Mirae Asset Daewoo had 4,244 workers as of June after letting 327 senior workers go early this year as part of a company-wide workforce reduction carried out in the form of “voluntary retirement.” Shinhan Investment Corp. in January accepted similar requests from those born before 1975. While specifics remain unclear, at least 30 have left. Following the
By Lee Kyung-min The number of bankruptcy requests filed by those aged between 20 and 29 has been continuing to rise over the past few years, driven by unpaid student loans and living expenses, data showed Sunday. This is an indication that the financially vulnerable whose borrowing choices are limited to high-interest rate, low-tier lenders are taking the hardest hit of the economic slowdown. According to data submitted to Rep. Kim Byung-wook of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) from the Supreme Court, the number was 691 in 2015, a 17 percent increase from 811 in 2018. Already 411 such requests have been filed in the first half of 2019.This is in stark contrast to the rest of the age groups, whose requests for bankruptcy have been on a continued decline between a rate of 4.2 percent and 28.4 percent over the past year. The plight shared by those in their 20s contrasts with their older counterparts, most of whom are able to borrow at a lower rate following key base rate cuts from the central bank. While the Bank of Korea (BOK) is expected to further cut key base rates amid l
Woori Financial Group Chairman Sohn Tae-seungBy Lee Kyung-min Woori Financial Group is expected to boost its credit card operations after acquiring Lotte Card in a consortium with MBK Partners, according to industry officials, Thursday.The Financial Services Commission said the consortium was eligible to push forward with the deal, allowing MBK Partners to hold a 60 percent stake in Lotte Card and Woori Bank 20 percent. With the possibility of Woori Bank securing a controlling stake in Lotte after buying shares from the private equity fund, this is a step closer to achieving the corporate initiative to strengthen its non-banking business outlined by group Chairman Sohn Tae-seung last year. He said at the bank's shareholders' meeting in December that he would push for mergers and acquisitions as part of efforts to better compete with four other financial groups. The aggressive push was to boost the performance after Woori Bank returned to its holding company status in January, a mission accomplished under his leadership about four years after it abandoned it. To land more customers, W
gettyimagesbankBy Lee Kyung-min The sales of publicly traded funds have been on a sharp rise over the past two months, as an increasing number of people turned to safer investments amid the fallout from the “irresponsible sales” of high-yield, high-risk derivative financial products, data showed Thursday. The derivative-linked funds (DLF), one among many products sold and managed by private equity funds (PEFs), are structured to track the performance of underlying assets such as interest rates and government-issued bond yields. Their returns are determined by the movements of those assets. According to the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), of 795 billion won ($661 million) worth of DLF products sold by Woori Bank and KEB Hana Bank, 66.9 billion won was lost as of Sept. 25. Worse yet, 351.3 billion won is expected to be lost, as the products' maturity is still to come, it added.Data from Korea Fund Ratings showed Korea's four leading commercial banks ― Shinhan, KB Kookmin, Woori and KEB Hana ― sold a combined 55.6 trillion won in publicly traded funds in September, up 9