KakaoBank

The banking service went into public in July 2017 in a huge spotlight due to its simplicity and unique and intuitive UI and UX. The bank attracted more than 240,000 customers within the first 24-hour-operation. The mobile app-based lender has achieved more than 10 million customers on July 11, 2019,[1] which is the largest in terms of customer volume among peers across the world, except for the Chinese peers.

kakaobank booked the first quarter net income of KRW 6.6 billion in the first quarter ended March 31, 2019, in 7 quarters from its public opening on July 27, 2017.[2] The South Korean neobank said its annual net income for 2019 is KRW 13.7 billion, the first annual-based net income of the company in two years from its public opening.[3] Additionally, the lender reported the first-half net income of KRW 45.3 billion. In November, the bank reported that its accumulated net income by third quarter ended at Sept. 30 was KRW 86.0 million.[4]

As of Nov. 30, 2020, kakaobank's customer volume is over 13.4 million and balances of loan and deposit are KRW 19.9 trillion and KRW 23.2 trillion, respectively.

In October 2020, the corporate valuation of the South Korean largest neobank was set around KRW 8.6 trillion through KRW 750 billion-capital raising from the U.S-based private equity TPG Capital and current shareholders.[5]

kakaobank officially announced Sept. 24 its IPO plan to be open to public.[6] The bank picked KB Security and Credit Suisse as lead managers for its IPO, with hiring Citi as a co-manager.[7]

Kakao Corp.(32.58%), Korea Investment Value Asset Management(27.79%), Korea Investment Holdings(4.79%), KB Koomin Bank(9.58%), Netmarble(3.83%), SGI(3.83%), Korea Post(3.83%), eBay(3.83%), Skyblue(Tencents, 3.83%), TPG Capital(2.83%), Yes24(1.92%), Employee Stock Ownership Association(1.36%).

As of November 30, 2020 and based on no. of shares.

kakaobank has been heading by co-CEO Lee Yong-woo and Yun Ho-young, who are renowned experts in, respectively, finance and ICT in South Korea. Lee had worked as a finance strategist and an investment expert in financial industry. Prior to head kakaobank, Lee worked as CIO at Korea Investment Management and head of strategy and planning department at Korea Investment Holdings. Lee holds PhD in economics from Seoul National University.

Yun set up a task-force team to create kakaobank when he was working in Kakao Corp. in 2015. Prior to kakaobank, Yun had also worked as senior management at Daum Communications, South Korea's internet portal, and ERGO daumdirect, a joint venture direct insurance seller in South Korea. Yun has graduated from HanYang University in Seoul, South Korea with a bachelor of management.

In March 2020, the bank said its board has decided to keep Yun as a sole CEO after Lee had resigned in January seeking to run for lawmaker.[8]

In September 2020, Business Insider picked Yun as one of "100 people transforming business in Asia", especially in finance category along with Piyush Gupta, CEO of DBS and Eric Jing, CEO and Executive Chairperson of Ant Financial.[9]

kakaobank provides full-banking services under a regulatory banking license. The services include loan, deposit, debit card, overseas remittance and other financial services such as group account.

Its deposit products include safe box, coin bank, time-deposit and installment saving account, which customers can adjust maturity and installment amount. Based on AI the bank has created, it added in March an auto-saving function on its con bank product, which has analyzed the balance changes of a designated debit account during last 6 months in order to calculate an amount that will be deposited to the coin bank account on every Saturday.[10]

Its loan product line-up consists of prime credit loan, secured credit loan for mid-and-low credit holder, unsecured credit loan for mid-and-low credit holder, overdraft loan, micro loan and housing deposit loan. Its loan process is been carried out completely online, which means customers do not need to visit to branches that do not actually exist.

Aside from conventional banking services, kakaobank has been providing group account service, stock account opening service, loan platform service and my credit information service.[11] In February, kakaobank added a new stock account opening service partnered with NH Investment & Securities, the second collaboration with a local brokerage following Korea Investment & Securities.[12] In April 2020, the bank started providing the issuance business of credit card under the partnership with four credit card issuers including Shinhan Card and Samsung Card. In October, kakaobank rolled out its first financial service for the country's teenagers aged between 14 and 18, called 'kakaobank mini' which consist of chargeable account and debit card.[13] In November, more than 500,000 teenagers opened 'kakaobank mini' within a month after its launching in the previous month. [14]

kakaobank provides full-banking products via its mobile app (Android, iOS). kakaobank enhanced user convenience by adopting easy identification(KYC) methods including using bio information of customers. iPhone users can use their fingerprint and face they have stored in their own phone for log-in of kakaobank app, simple transfer, etc. kakaobank's UI and UX are very intuitive. Once customers open kakaobank's app, it is designed to see their balances of all accounts they currently hold. Layout of the pages in the app is designed on the result of analysis in terms of customers’ expected route and needs. Customers are able to decorate their profile in the app by changing photo and name. In July 2019, kakaobank's Android app has been recognized as No.1 banking app based on MAU and the most downloaded banking app in the country by igaoworks.[15] In April 2020, the lender rolled out a new version of its banking app named kakaobank app 2.0.

• Official website