December & Company Launches 'AI Investment Securities Firm' Joint Venture with KB Securities and NCSoft

[Asia Economy Reporter Minji Lee] December & Company Asset Management announced on the 7th that it will launch a joint venture (JV) for an 'AI Simple Investment Securities Company' in collaboration with KB Securities and NCSoft. Based on the investment funds raised from KB Securities and NCSoft, December & Company plans to expand into an AI-based simple investment specialized securities firm.

December & Company-KB Securities-NCSOFT Joint Venture (JV) Launch Ceremony (from left: Park Jeong-rim, CEO of KB Securities; Jeong In-young, CEO of December & Company; Jeong Jin-su, Senior Vice President of NCSOFT)

On the 6th, December & Company, KB Securities, and NCSoft held a signing ceremony for the launch of the joint venture at the InterContinental Hotel. The ceremony was attended by December & Company CEO Jeong In-young, KB Securities CEO Park Jeong-rim, NCSoft Senior Vice President Jeong Jin-su, and about 20 executives and employees from each company.

For the launch of this joint venture, December & Company secured a total of 60 billion KRW in funding, with 30 billion KRW from KB Securities and 30 billion KRW from NCSoft. The large-scale capital raising began centered on KB Securities, which has maintained a close collaborative relationship with December & Company for the past three years to build robo-advisor solutions. NCSoft highly evaluated the rapid growth of the personalized simple investment service 'Fint' and the expansion potential of the MyData market, while also focusing on the possibility of collaboration with various AI technologies beyond finance.

December & Company's 'Fint' will be utilized as the main platform for the AI simple investment securities joint venture. Launched in April last year as Korea's first non-face-to-face discretionary investment service, 'Fint' is experiencing rapid growth based on its proprietary technology platform 'PREFACE' and AI engine 'ISAAC.' The backend platform 'PREFACE' goes beyond categorizing customers into broad groups by their tendencies and enables responses tailored to individual customers. The number of members has increased by more than 30% monthly on average this year, surpassing 230,000 as of the end of September. The number of new discretionary investment accounts also exceeded 10,000 per month.

KB Securities, which will contribute financial expertise to the joint venture, has demonstrated outstanding performance in financial asset management and has been expanding a collaborative ecosystem using KB Securities' financial licenses and infrastructure with external fintech companies since the year before last.

NCSoft, which began AI research in 2011, is extensively studying AI technologies widely applicable in daily life, including natural language generation and understanding, natural language-based question answering, knowledge reasoning, and data detection, in addition to the gaming industry. Recognized as having top-tier AI technology in Korea, NCSoft currently operates five labs under its 'AI Center' and 'NLP (Natural Language Processing) Center,' with over 150 specialized personnel. NCSoft plans to share its AI-based technology development experience in this joint venture.

December & Company plans to invest intensively in strengthening professional personnel, developing and advancing new services with the newly secured resources, aiming to pioneer innovative fintech businesses combining MyData and AI. Additionally, it plans to pursue a securities business license that will significantly expand its asset management business area, enabling the provision of more advanced hyper-personalized financial solutions. Obtaining the securities business license will allow the company to offer services such as sales of financial investment products like stocks and funds, and insurance brokerage, thereby providing more expanded services.

Jeong In-young, CEO of December & Company, stated, "Ultimately, fintech services based on digital technology will be chosen by consumers depending on how sophisticated and convenient the personalized services are. With partners possessing the industry's best technology and expertise gathered together, we will create a new concept of a comprehensive financial platform that general customers can use for a lifetime, realizing a super-gap within the financial industry."

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