KB Kookmin Bank attributes success in novice's attitude

By Nam Hyun-woo

“I will be the rookie of the year in my bank’s marketing competition.” This is a sentence Yang Yoon-ha, a worker at a KB Kookmin Bank branch in Incheon, repeated every morning last year.

Yang, last year’s winner of the bank’s marketing rookie of the year award, said the award not only comes with carrots, such as overseas training, but also gives her the chance to nurture abilities required of a successful bank worker.

Like Yang, many employees at KB Kookmin are striving for the award, according to the bank. Introduced last year, the marketing competition, open to those having worked less than five years at KB, is serving as a stage for young and ambitious employees to achieve their goals, the bank said.

“New employees deployed at branches are educated through our internal training programs, but it is true that it will take time before they acclimatize themselves to the work,” a KB Kookmin official said. “The competition helps our employees to do their own thinking and be creative in marketing.”

And this is what happened with Yang. She attributed her success to the way she managed her customers’ needs. Through SNS, such as Kakao Talk and Facebook, she provided financial information to customers, as well as taking good care of them. “Many customers did not purchase products immediately, but they did eventually as I provided them detailed information on a regular basis,” she said.

KB Kookmin said it could succeed in retail banking because many of its employees have not forgotten what they learned when they were rookies, just like Yang.

KB Kookmin Bank CEO Yoon Jong-kyoo said: “To maximize our staff’s ability, leaders and seniors should be mentors, providing the right advice to younger employees so they will not forget what they were thinking when they were novices.”