Banks feared to extend 'weak' recruitment practices in 2021

Customers talk with bank clerks for loan counseling at a bank's sales office in Seoul on Jan. 5. Yonhap

By Lee Min-hyung

Commercial banks here are expected to continue reducing their recruitment in 2021 amid falling demand for traditional bank clerks and sales offices with the rise of digital banking.

According to data from industry tracker CEO Score, the actual number of employees at 19 banks here declined by 324 as of the end of last December, compared to the previous year.

The number of customers who signed the National Pension Plan in the banking industry came in at 12,784 last year, but 13,108 officials in the industry lost their entitlement to the pension for reasons such as voluntary retirement.

Of concern is that banks have little willingness to increase recruitment this year due to the growth of non-face-to-face transactions following the COVID-19-induced economic fallout. Lenders hope to invest more on setting up sophisticated digital banking platforms, rather than hiring new clerks for conventional work.

“For banks, increasing the number of conventional clerks does no good to their profitability,” an official from the industry said. “Most work is being replaced by automation, speeding up the closure of offline sales channels for efficient management in the world of digital banking.”