Hana's coding education to boost digitization

Hana Financial Group workers attend a class to learn coding at the Hana Global Campus in Cheongna International City in Incheon, in October. Courtesy of Hana Financial Group

By Lee Kyung-min

Hana Financial Group has accelerated its efforts to become a platform-based digital banking services provider by requiring all its workers to learn coding.

The group said Tuesday that all employees from the group and its subsidiaries will have to attend a class by December to learn a computer language used to develop apps, websites and software.

They will learn how to use “scratch,” a block-based visual programming language, and submit a portfolio of their work product such as games or animated clips.

More comprehensive tasks are in store for higher-level managers, who will be required to have a good command of “Justinmind,” a prototyping tool interface that enables efficient management of digitally processed financial data.

Group and subsidiary managers will be given an assignment to develop an app, through which the group believes the older generation's understanding of the digital process and hence their confidence will be boosted.

“Digital transformation is not a matter of choice but survival,” KEB Hana Bank Deputy President and Chief Future Innovation Officer Han Jun-seong said.

“Digital capabilities are no longer a specialty only information technology (IT) personnel need expertise in, but a basic skillset all financial services workers should have.”

The group expects the training will help workers use big data as a marketing tool, a possibly game-changing method of profit generation that could replace the current sales practice heavily reliant on personal connections.

“Marketing can and will become more precise in identifying and targeting customers' needs,” a KEB Hana official said. “Data-backed marketing will save us time and corporate resources and help workers with reduced sales pressure focus more on creating high-value work.”

Once the workers have a firm grasp of digital capabilities, the nurtured talent will come up with new and creative ideas that can better integrate financial services into the digital world, the group said.

“This is an initial step of what we plan to make an integral part of being a Hana worker,” the official said. “It will not have an immediate effect, but there will come a time when the difference between knowing and not knowing will have a vastly different outcome.”

The mandatory training is part of an initiative led by group Chairman Kim Jung-tai who vowed that Hana would become a fully data-based entity to transform itself from a traditional financial services provider to a digital platform company.

Kim has repeatedly emphasized the need to reinvent the group as a digital information services provider, which he said requires a continued effort to help workers set new goals, prioritizing a customer-oriented mindset and embracing new challenges.

Similarly, KEB Hana Bank CEO Ji Sung-kyoo said at his inauguration in March he would prioritize digitization and globalization, with a large focus on becoming a data-based entity, in line with the group's top initiative.