"'Financial Underdog Helper' Launches: First Joint Venture Established by Three Major Telecom Companies"

SK Telecom, KT, LG Uplus
Establish Specialized Personal Credit Evaluation Corporation

Providing Services Based on Telecom Information
Benefits for Students and Others with Limited Financial History

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Hye-seon] The three major telecom companies are establishing a joint credit evaluation corporation to support financially marginalized groups who lack financial transaction information. This is the first time the three telecom companies have formed a joint corporation.

The First Joint Corporation of the Three Telecom Companies is a Credit Rating Agency

SK Telecom, KT, and LG Uplus announced on the 4th that they have signed a joint investment agreement with SGI Seoul Guarantee and Korea Credit Bureau (KCB) to enter the specialized personal credit evaluation business together. The specialized personal credit evaluation business involves collecting and assessing information necessary to judge an individual's credit using non-financial information rather than financial data, and providing the results to third parties.

The joint corporation will be promoted with the three telecom companies each contributing 26% of the shares, while SGI Seoul Guarantee and KCB will invest as strategic investors with 11% each. The five companies have already applied for corporate merger review to establish the joint corporation. They plan to sequentially carry out necessary procedures such as establishing a preparatory corporation, publicly recruiting a CEO, and applying for business rights after merger approval.

The five companies held a joint investment agreement signing ceremony on the afternoon of the 3rd at the SGI Seoul Guarantee headquarters. They pledged to work together to realize ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) management values by improving financial accessibility for new filers (those with insufficient financial history) who lack financial transaction information.

Non-Financial Credit Evaluation Using Telecom Information

In accordance with the revised "Credit Information Use and Protection Act" aimed at revitalizing the data industry, the joint corporation will utilize non-financial credit evaluation services based on telecom information from the three telecom companies. The five companies expect that once the joint corporation is launched, it will provide financial benefits such as increasing loan limits and lowering interest rates for financially vulnerable groups like students and homemakers who have limited access to financial services due to insufficient financial history.

The five companies plan to collaborate to lay the foundation for data business activation starting with the non-financial credit evaluation business through the joint corporation and to discover new businesses for creating new customer value.

SGI Seoul Guarantee plans to leverage its existing mid-interest loan guarantee operation capabilities and use telecom information-based credit evaluation services to guarantee people with insufficient financial history. KCB, based on its competitive credit evaluation capabilities operating the existing personal credit evaluation business, will actively cooperate to establish credit evaluation models using telecom information in the market, which is expected to improve the quality of domestic personal credit evaluation services.

Competition in Telecom Market, Cooperation in ESG

Recently, the three telecom companies have been focusing on ESG activities such as enhancing customer value and reducing social costs, separate from their fierce competition. Representative examples include joint investment in native application (app) markets to firmly protect the domestic ICT ecosystem against global giant companies, cooperation on the PASS identity verification service that offers convenience and security, and the establishment of joint funds to promote ESG management.

SK Telecom, KT, LG Uplus, and SK Broadband also jointly respond to natural disaster recovery and prevention. The four telecom companies share information on telecom facility defects or damage, risks during construction work, and public damage occurrences, and have pledged to cooperate in fault handling and facility damage recovery. They also work together to check the safety of telecom and related facilities during normal times in preparation for disasters and to improve risk and vulnerable facilities.

The natural disasters jointly addressed by the four telecom companies include damage caused by typhoons, floods, earthquakes, landslides, wildfires, and fires, and they also collaborate on major industrial and civic disasters.

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