By Kang Seung-woo
Banking goliath KB Financial Group has exhibited a solid display in 2011, as the company registered 1.57 trillion won in net profit during the first six months of the year.
In addition, thanks to its improved corporate governance structure, KB has cemented its status as a leading financial services group by sweeping a variety of awards which have to do with transparent management and customer trust.
And now, on the back of impressive achievements, the financial holding firm, headed by Chairman Euh Yoon-dae, is stepping up efforts to demonstrate philanthropy and accountability to the communities in which it operates.
As part of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, KB Financial has come up with various projects including a job-matching program for young jobseekers, a public interest foundation and more generous home equity loans for the middle-class and low-income earners.
KB Good Job was launched in January this year and uses Kookmin Bank’s around 1,200 branches across the nation to help job hunters and connect them with the bank’s clients in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
The company, which hired eight graduates from Meister high schools ― a new type of vocational school ― plans to spend 4 billion won this year to support firms employing jobseekers under the program. In addition, it held a job fair in Songdo, Incheon last month that drew approximately 12,300 jobseekers.
As of the end of September, more than 10,300 people were looking for work via the program, with 6,630 companies offering more than 7,000 positions.
KB set up the KB Foundation in May to create and finance a wide range of educational and scholarship programs. The foundation is based on a 20-billion-won fund contributed to by the group and its key affiliates KB Kookmin Bank, KB Kookmin Card and KB Investment and Securities.
In August, the foundation also organized the ``Dugeun Dugeun Economy Festival,’’ a series of cultural events for 400 children from daycare centers in 11 major cities including Seoul, Busan and Daejeon. The events mixed fun and play with educational programs aimed at teaching children basic economic principles and consulting with them on their future dreams.
To help financially challenged homebuyers and tenants, KB has been providing fixed-rate mortgages with longer maturities, aimed at easing borrowers’ burdens in servicing debt. The interest rates of the loans range from 4.8 to 5.3 percent depending on the length of maturities.
Meanwhile, KB has been active in donations for the needy and victims of natural disasters.
Since 1999, it has donated a total of 65 billion won for local needy neighbors, while giving 1 billion won and 500 million won respectively for casualties of a Japanese earthquake and tsunami in March this year and an earthquake in Sichuan Province in China in 2008.