East Asia

The clustered skyscrapers at CTBC’s futuristic headquarters in Taipei’s Nangang district betray the reality that the enterprise housed within is just a bank. With its shopping malls, branded stores and dedicated infrastructure integrated into Taipei’s grid, it feels more like a miniature city here, or at the very least an important government ministry complex. Which, in many respects, CTBC is.

The clustered skyscrapers at CTBC’s futuristic headquarters in Taipei’s Nangang district betray the reality that the enterprise housed within is just a bank. With its shopping malls, branded stores and dedicated infrastructure integrated into Taipei’s grid, it feels more like a miniature city here, or at the very least an important government ministry complex. Which, in many respects, CTBC is.

The image abroad of corporate Korea is of the same big-name chaebol: LG, Samsung, Hyundai and so on. But like other wealthy markets geared toward manufacturing and exports (Germany and Japan), much value lies in small and medium-sized enterprises. These SMEs act as Korea’s beating heart, generating abundant employment and acting as vital crucibles of creativity.

Korea’s two fully licensed digital lenders, kakaobank and K Bank, hit the ground running in the second quarter of 2017. Both were well-funded and backed by large institutional shareholders: investment management firm Korea Investment Holdings and KB Kookmin Bank both backed Kakao, while a slew of well-heeled investors including KT Corporation (South Korea’s largest telecoms provider), Woori Bank and China’s Ant Financial invested in K Bank.

A decade ago, the founders or scions of corporate empires dominated the rich lists. But in recent years, the face of wealth has changed to reflect the successes of a younger generation of entrepreneurs.

Foreign lenders have long struggled to crack Korea. It’s a tough place in which to operate; bruising and bitterly competitive, only the tough and fully committed survive.

Nominating a winner for this award is not easy. Korea’s economy is dominated by conglomerates whose interests stretch across multiple sectors and markets. Meeting their day-to-day corporate and investment banking needs is big business for local and foreign lenders alike, and the quality of service between one institution and another can be difficult to define and discern.

For Korea’s commercial banking sector, 2018 was an annus horribilis; many of the biggest lenders were assailed by recruitment scandals that claimed several chief executives, while underlying business was squeezed by a bunch of impressively disruptive digital upstarts.

Community and social responsibility as the ideal is understood – and practiced – elsewhere isn’t much of a thing in Japan. More nationalistically inclined Japanese bankers argue that such ideals are inbuilt into normal banking and business practice in the country: helping each other is just what Japanese banks do. But many shrug or draw a blank when asked about it, not entirely sure what it is, explaining that it is something for other countries where wealth is less evenly spread than Japan, where 90% of the people identify as middle class.