Shinhan Group's profit rises 14% in 2015

The net profit of Shinhan Financial Group, the nation’s largest banking group by assets, jumped to 2.37 trillion won ($1.9 billion) in 2015, a 14 percent increase from 2.08 trillion won in 2014, as result of increased deposits and strong performances of its non-banking sectors including securities and credit card, the company said in its regulatory filing.

It was the second consecutive year for the financial giant to achieve more than 2 trillion won in net profit.

“The performance resulted from our push for strategies for sustainable growth with a long-term view. Synergies have been created between banking and non-banking units as they mutually contributed to the profit,” the group said in a release. 

Market watchers forecast Shinhan Financial is estimated to reap the largest profit among rivals for the eighth straight year until 2015.

The group’s flagship subsidiary Shinhan Bank logged a net profit of 1.49 trillion won last year, up 7.4 percent from the previous year.

Net profit of its non-banking firms soared 18.3 percent on-year to 1.92 trillion won. The amount made up about 42 percent of the group’s total net profit last year, up from the previous year’s 39 percent.

Amid the sluggish economy, its credit card unit Shinhan Card logged a net profit of 694.8 billion won in 2015, up 9.4 percent from 2014 with the help of marketing drive based on big data.

Its brokerage unit Shinhan Investment also saw its net profit jump 82.2 percent year-on-year to 215.5 billion won in 2015 due to the growth in stock transactions and the brisk sales of investment products amid low interest rates, the company said. 

By Park Han-na (hnpark@heraldcorp.com)