Crying out for digital transformation... "Only 9.6% of IT personnel in the financial sector"

It has been revealed that IT personnel in the financial sector (commercial banks, internet banks, securities firms, and big tech companies) account for less than 10% of the total employees.

According to the "Status of IT Personnel in Major Domestic Financial Sectors" received by the office of Kang Min-guk, a member of the National Assembly's Political Affairs Committee from the People Power Party, from the Financial Supervisory Service on the 10th, as of the end of March, out of a total of 71,195 employees in the financial sector, only 6,809 were IT personnel, representing just 9.6%.

Looking at each sector, the proportion of IT personnel in the three big tech companies (Toss, Kakao Pay, Naver Financial) was the highest at 50.4%. Among a total of 2,136 employees, 1,077 were IT personnel. Internet banks (Kakao Bank, Toss Bank, K Bank) had 804 IT personnel out of 1,879 employees (42.8%). In contrast, commercial banks had only 4,215 IT personnel out of 54,748 employees (7.7%), and securities firms had 713 IT personnel out of 12,432 employees (5.7%). Considering the unique characteristics of each sector, Kang pointed out that the disparity in IT personnel recruitment between commercial banks and securities firms compared to big tech and internet banks is at a serious level.

By company, among big tech firms, Toss had the highest proportion of IT personnel at 52%, followed by Kakao Pay at 50.1%, and Naver Financial at 48.7%. Among internet banks, Toss Bank had the highest IT personnel proportion at 58.9%, followed by K Bank at 43.9%, and Kakao Bank at 38.7%.

Among commercial banks, Kookmin Bank had the highest IT personnel proportion at 9.2%, followed by Hana Bank at 7.7%, Shinhan Bank at 7.1%, and Woori Bank at 6.5%. For securities firms, Mirae Asset Securities had the highest at 6.2%, followed by NH Investment & Securities at 5.9%, Samsung Securities at 5.7%, and Korea Investment & Securities at 4.9%.

The level of new IT personnel recruitment across financial sectors from 2019 to 2021 was similar. The sector with the highest proportion of new IT hires was also big tech. Among the new hires in the three big tech companies, 46.3% were IT personnel, followed by internet banks at 37.6%, commercial banks at 15.5%, and securities firms at 6.9%.

The proportion of IT personnel retirees by financial sector showed the opposite trend to new hires. The retirement rate of IT personnel was lowest in securities firms at 2.9%, followed by commercial banks (3.2%), internet banks (22.2%), and big tech (30.3%). Regarding this, Kang analyzed that it is related to the salary levels in securities firms. The average annual salary of IT personnel was highest in securities firms at 127.72 million KRW.

Kang stated, "As the digital transformation in the financial sector accelerates and new security risks emerge, expanding IT personnel is more important than ever," adding, "The Financial Services Commission needs to explicitly include the level of IT personnel recruitment by financial companies, which is currently only a recommendation by the Financial Security Institute, in the subordinate regulations of the revised Electronic Financial Transactions Act."

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