Shinhan, KOSCOM to build platform for foreigners

By Park Hyong-ki

gettyimagesbank

Shinhan Card and KOSCOM have joined hands to develop a multi-language financial mobile platform for 2 million foreign residents living here, the credit card company said, Wednesday.

Shinhan Card is the biggest card firm by profit, and KOSCOM is a financial IT system developer of the Korea Exchange.

The two companies' in-house venture teams will pursue the development project, which will include creating a database system, managing and analyzing foreign customers' data.

They seek to develop various financial products and services offered via the platform including insurance, credit cards and loans, Shinhan added.

With the database system, they will also build a key function that can recommend such products and services according to their needs.

The platform will have financial education content not only in English but also Chinese and Vietnamese.

Shinhan's in-house “High Credit” venture team recently developed a digital model that analyzes individual credit ratings. This model will be integrated into the platform, it said.

KOSCOM's “Finset” venture team has developed an application that provides asset management and private banking services through data analysis.

“We will use each other's technological strengths to build a platform that can be easily used by foreign residents,” said a Shinhan Card spokesman.

Shinhan's digital drive comes as it wants the company to become a competitive digital company, rather than a financial one.

It seeks to achieve this goal through mergers and acquisitions, and strategic ties with nonfinancial companies.

The card company also aims to generate 10 percent of its annual profit from overseas markets through digitalization.

To this end, it has been aggressively adopting big data and cloud computing technologies.

It plans to deploy more than 50 percent of its employees to work in such tech areas to develop new services.

This is in line with Shinhan Financial Group's Digital Innovation Institute, which has 140 employees who research, test and create new business models that can disrupt the market with technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain and big data analysis.

Shinhan Card CEO Lim Young-jin has been reappointed for another two years.