[Global Finance Awards] Woori Bank prioritizes user convenience, profits

CONSUMER FINANCE / BANK
WOORI BANK

For Woori Bank, one of the top business goals this year was to reinforce trust in the market by protecting consumers’ rights and improving user convenience.

The bank’s latest move was to revise its employee evaluation scheme to prioritize sustainable customer profit over short-term performance.

Earlier this month Woori Financial Group Chairman and Woori Bank CEO Sohn Tae-seung announced a business innovation road map for next year, which includes a plan to revise its key performance indicators, or KPIs.

Under the plan, the current 24 KPIs are to be cut down to 10 and individual branches will be allowed to autonomously adopt customized sales targets.

“So far, the (bank’s) headquarters would allocate sale objectives to individual branches, requiring them to meet a target line in major sectors such as loans, deposits, funds, credit cards and others,” said Sohn.

“But from now on, our R&D departments will have to compete with one another to promote their products and services. This will consequently boost customer benefits.”

Customer profitability and customer care were given higher priority, while the non-interest income index was eliminated.

Also, the bank extended the evaluation term for KPIs to a year from the current half-year, vowing to value sustainable customer profit over the bank’s short-term gains.

Another forte of Woori Bank is its mobile banking app Wibee, which won the Smart App Award for design innovation at the Korea Internet Professionals Association’s i-Awards this year.

The user-friendly mobile service is expected to create synergy with open banking -- a service that allows bank customers to use virtually all banking services for different banks via a single mobile platform.

On Oct. 30, 10 major commercial banks including Woori Bank started offering open banking on a pilot basis, and full service is set to kick off Dec. 18.

To further support its customers, Woori Bank is operating special bank windows dedicated to people with physical disabilities or social disadvantages. It also offers voice assistance and large fonts to assist elderly users of internet and mobile banking services.

Woori Bank was realigned into a holding group system in January this year, kicking off as Woori Financial Group and embracing its affiliates under Woori Financial Holdings.

By Bae Hyun-jung (tellme@heraldcorp.com)