Shinhan urges employees to display 'self-leadership' amid uncertainty

Shinhan Financial Group Chairman Cho Yong-byoung speaks during an online workshop held through its metaverse platform, Thursday. Courtesy of Shinhan Financial Group

By Lee Min-hyung

Shinhan Financial Group Chairman Cho Yong-byoung has urged his staff to possess a strong sense of “self-leadership,” as part of a key strategy to tackle widening financial uncertainties and toughening industry rivalry.

“The most important thing to overcome a period of uncertainty is to have self-leadership driven by employees' creativity and proactivity,” Cho told his employees during an online workshop held in a metaverse platform, Thursday.

Cho and Shinhan's executives and employees exchanged their strategies on how to ensure sustainable growth, and the leader reiterated the importance of proactivity and creativity in bracing for the current uncertain business environment.

“All Shinhan employees should move forward with a shared vision of becoming the top financial holding firm,” he said.

The Korean financial market will remain volatile throughout 2022 amid lingering fears of the pandemic and the U.S. Fed's planned rate hikes. The rise of mobile banks and platform companies will also come as a major risk factor for Shinhan and other major financial holding firms here.

Earlier this year, the Shinhan chief picked digital transformation and environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) as the group's two management talking points. To enhance these core pillars, Cho asked his employees to keep learning, growing and thereby staying ahead of rivals.

“Customers are moving in line with the value of experiences, not the size of financial firms,” he said. “Shinhan should offer distinguished experiences to customers and be ahead of the competition against big tech and platform firms by managing our digital platforms in the right, speedy and unique way.”

The remark came amid rapid growth of Korea's dominant platform giants ― such as Naver and Kakao ― whose financial presence is expanding at an alarming pace. Both internet and mobile platform operators are on track to launch a series of digital-driven financial services, posing a major threat to conventional financial holding firms ― including Shinhan.

For instance, KakaoBank overtook Shinhan Financial Group in market capitalization in less than a year after the mobile lender's initial public offering. More internet-only banks ― such as K bank and Toss Bank ― also plan to go public for the next few years.

Despite such competitive market circumstances, the Shinhan chief encouraged his employees to have an agile mindset and improve their executive ability this year.

“Speed is competitiveness, so we should increase speed while performing tasks.”