IBK to take consultations for businesses to whole new level
Kwon Seon-joo, CEO of Industrial Bank of Korea
In an email interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily, Kwon unveiled the IBK’s New Year’s resolution to start a new consulting project for SMEs that may be struggling to finance or streamline their businesses across the country.
“We have completed our first goal of providing free consultations for 2,000 SMEs over the past three and half years,” Kwon said. “Based on our know-how, now we will double the number of consultations and will provide free consultations for tech-based and innovative businesses without limitation.”
The following are excerpts from the interview.
Q. What’s the plan for supporting small and midsize enterprises in 2015?
A. Even in times of a sluggish economy, the IBK has been devoted to supporting funding for SMEs to expand their footprints and help them survive. As of November, the bank provided loans of about 38.3 trillion won ($34.6 billion) to SMEs and will provide even more in 2015. We will expand the equipment investment funding for SMEs and systematize support for creative financing through different services such as launching technology financing brands and providing investment programs that take different stages of corporations’ development into account. Another focus will be on creating an ecosystem for creative SMEs to grow and develop by providing management consulting.
IBK has a consulting center. What was the center’s major achievement this year and what are its upcoming plans?
We have completed 2,000 projects through the “Very Good Consulting” project. The project, which started in August 2011 to celebrate the company’s 50th anniversary, began to help SMEs grow and help resolve those companies’ difficulties. In July 2013, we managed to complete 1,000 projects and we managed to double the number by December this year, which is about seven months earlier than what we planned. About 97.3 percent of the clients who benefited from the free consulting were satisfied.
Now we’re planning to kick off another project called “SMEs Hope Consulting Project.” This project will offer free consulting that’s specialized according to the corporations’ developmental stages. Our goal is to provide consulting to 1,000 companies every year, and reach 3,000 in 2017.
We will provide consulting in various sectors including, but not limited to, human resources, patents and law. There will be 16 smaller projects that propel SMEs’ internal growth as well as their leads in the market.
How was the bank’s performance in 2014? And how does 2015 look?
The net income is expected to be around 900 billion won this year, higher than last year’s 812 billion won. Although the overall net interest margin of financial institutions declined in 2014, our bank saw a slight improvement in the net interest margin.Next year will be another tough year with uncertainty looming in the global economy and low interest rates continuing, but we will strive to be fruitful as a loyal companion of small and midsize enterprises and also as a bank with social responsibility. We will cut down on expenses that are neither essential nor urgent, and we will improve our procurement structure.
BY SONG SU-HYUN, KIM EUN-JI [ssh@joongang.co.kr]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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