Lee Moon-hwan, BC Card CEO, Appointed as K-Bank's Second President and Savior...

Eun Seong-su, Financial Services Commission Chairman, "K-Bank Capital Increase, FSC Will Also Support"

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Hyo-jin] K-Bank, South Korea's first internet-only bank facing a financial crisis, has appointed Lee Moon-hwan, a former KT executive and current CEO of BC Card (photo), as its second president.

K-Bank announced on the 11th that its Executive Candidate Recommendation Committee had made this decision. Lee is scheduled to be officially appointed at K-Bank's regular shareholders' meeting on the 31st. His term is expected to be two years.

Lee joined KT in 1989 and has held positions such as Head of New Business Development, Head of Management Planning, and Head of Corporate Business Division. Since 2018, he has led BC Card, earning recognition for spearheading innovative growth based on financial ICT convergence.

Immediately after taking office as BC Card CEO, he emphasized digital transformation and aimed to transform the company into a platform business operator. As a result, the number of subscribers to the simple payment platform 'Paybook' reached 8 million earlier this year, achieving more than triple growth during his tenure.

In addition, in 2018, he led major projects such as the introduction of Korea's first FIDO (Fast Identity Online, an international biometric authentication standard)-based facial recognition service and the launch of the country's first QR payment service by a card company.

In 2017, Lee played a pivotal role in KT's opening of South Korea's first financial security data center. The financial security data center is a cloud-based data center dedicated to financial institutions that complies with electronic financial supervision regulations, and it is regarded as having opened the era of financial cloud computing in earnest.

A K-Bank Executive Candidate Recommendation Committee official evaluated Lee, saying, "He not only has extensive experience in the financial ICT convergence field but is also well-known as a manager who overcomes crises head-on with excellent strategy and steadfast management, achieving remarkable results."

The official added, "He is also a collaborative leader who values substantive communication over formality, making him the right person to successfully resolve K-Bank's current challenges, including the promotion of a paid-in capital increase."

Lee will take on the important task of resolving K-Bank's financial difficulties, which have worsened to the point where new loan operations are impossible. This comes after the amendment to the Special Act on Internet-Only Banks, which would have allowed KT to participate as a major shareholder and opened the way for K-Bank's recovery, was rejected at the National Assembly plenary session on the 5th.

K-Bank had planned to overcome its financial difficulties by changing KT to a major shareholder and receiving a capital injection of 590 billion won, expanding its capital to the 1 trillion won level.

In this regard, Eun Sung-soo, Chairman of the Financial Services Commission, attending the full meeting of the Political Affairs Committee held at the National Assembly in Yeouido, Seoul, said, "If there is anything the Financial Services Commission can do to help K-Bank with its capital increase, we will help."

Chairman Eun said, "It seems that K-Bank's shareholders are considering the capital increase as Plan B under the current circumstances, but even this does not seem easy."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.