Former sales experts lead banks

By Nam Hyun-woo

Hur Yin

Lee Kwang-goo

Ham Young-joo

Banks are appointing sales experts as their chief executives. The move is interpreted as the banks shifting their focus to garner more clients amid increasingly harsh competition.

Earlier this month, KB Financial Group named its Sales Group Vice President Hur Yin as the new CEO of its flagship KB Kookmin Bank.

Hur spent most of his KB career in sales for corporate and institutional financing, and has been the sales group chief since last year.

Under his leadership, KB became the main bank of several university hospitals, including Ajou and Seoul National.

In July, KB Kookmin became the exclusive provider of loans to 140,000 police officers across Korea, beating rival Shinhan Bank which had the business for the past 10 years.

Woori Bank CEO Lee Kwang-goo, who renewed his two-year term earlier this year, is also a sales expert.

After starting his second term, Lee spent time traveling in France, the U.K. and other European countries and held a series of investor relations events in order to draw investments to the bank. Before his stint began as Woori chief, Lee served as vice president of the bank’s individual client sales division.

Lee’s sales strategies were well illustrated in a presentation for the National Pension Service’s (NPS) main bank selection.

Earlier this week, the NPS said it had selected Woori as its primary bank for the next three years, meaning the lender will handle financial services for the NPS involving 600 trillion won ($530 billion) in funds.

Lee attended the presentation at NPS headquarters in Jeonju, North Jeolla Province, and made speeches to NPS officials, drawing their compliments that Woori has a deep understanding of the NPS.

KEB Hana Bank CEO Ham Young-joo is also a sales expert and Standard Chartered Bank Korea CEO Park Chong-bok also spent almost 30 years of his career in sales.

Industry watchers say these CEO appointments show that sales are important for domestic banks.

In the past, strategists or financial experts comprised the talent pool for bank CEOs, because the banks’ primary revenue source of household lending was on a robust increase amid protracted low-interest and they had to control the risks stemming from this.

As this era is coming to its end, however, banks believe garnering more clients -- whether individual or institutional -- is becoming more important, watchers said.

“With the authorities tightening regulations on household lending, banks are striving to find new revenue sources, such as institutional financing, in recognition that they cannot expect solid numbers by relying on household lending only,” a bank official said.