By Oh Young-jin
Unceremoniously, Shinhan Bank CEO Suh Jin-won entered a reception room adjacent to his office in downtown Seoul for a recent interview with Business Focus.
Suh’s two chief PR officials accommodated a four-reporter team from Business Focus, who were waiting for the CEO’s arrival. It was one of reporters that first noticed Suh’s unannounced arrival.
It was obvious that he didn’t show any air of pretentious importance, putting a disarming, innocent sort of smile on his face.
For the next 40 minutes or so, he turned out to be unassuming as expected but nonetheless showed a high degree of determination, apparently his ticket to the top of the corporate ladder at Korea’s top bank.
It was not certain whether two main characters in last year’s internal feud — former Chairman Ra Eung-chan and Shin Sang-hoon, former president of its holding firm — were still influencing the mindset of Shinhan as an institution. But Suh didn’t have anything to say against the two, widely regarded as the founding fathers of sorts of the banking group.
“It comes to what we consider to be our DNA,” Suh said in response to the question of why his bank has been doing good business despite the internal strife.
Suh observed that Shinhan started humbly with only three branches but has never stopped growing in terms of the bottom line as well as its size. Now, Shinhan tellers carrying carts through a maze of Namdaemun Market, one of the biggest traditional markets in downtown Seoul, for business with merchants is now a legend of sorts. The merchants of the market were earning a great deal of money but didn’t have time to go to a bank so it was those like Ra or Shin who put into practice an Islamic aplomb, “If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad, Muhammad must go to the mountain.”
In hindsight, it was an inevitable choice for the late-comer bank in the industry already under firm grip by big banks. Now, many of those goliaths have long gone with Shinhan now being a champion in various aspects.
But it doesn’t mean that Shinhan is holding on to the bygone history represented by Shin and Ra.
New rules have been already promulgated, for instance, setting an age limit over which an incumbent CEO can’t seek another term. This obviously came as a result of a reflection that the Shin-Ra power struggle was caused in larger part to Ra’s repeated terms at the helm.
Once again, Suh didn’t say a word of remonstration against the two, once again saying that denying them was like denying his bank’s history.
“We still stick to the Shinhan Way,” he said, referring to its catchphrase adopted by Ra and Shin.
“Look at a bamboo tree. It gets more nodes as it grows older. Shinhan has grown so fast and smooth that, figuratively speaking, it has added a few nodes of maturity. Last year was an occasion for Shinhan to get that important node,” he said.
He explained that it means that customers were at the center because, “without them, it was not possible for us to make such a fast growth and it won’t be possible for us to continue to grow.”
That was an enabler that was pivotal to Shinhan overcoming a series of challenges ranging from a late start to post-merger integration.
So does Suh want another term? He was picked to take his current job to finish the remaining term of his predecessor that expires in March.
Obviously he wants it but is quick to qualify his wish by generalizing, “Everybody wants to be judged fairly on the basis of his or her performance. I too want to be judged in that way.”
He said that he also wants to stick to his work philosophy of not being “position-oriented.”
“I have never asked for this job or that job throughout my banking career,” he said. “I have done what has been given to me to the best of my ability.”
He has led important lucrative quarters for Shinhan, putting away some serious concerns that Shinhan would not be adversely affected by the internal feud.
Asked whether his bank will repeat its stellar performance, he said that it was his job to keep the bank on course.
In terms of his bank’s strategy, he agrees that there is no other way but to expand overseas.
He noted that Korea has a foreign population of 1.3 million on the top of a saturated domestic market but, as expected of any experienced banker, he didn’t reveal his strategies for achieving the goal of internationalizing Shinhan but didn’t rule out M&As in Asia.