South Korea's Financial Leaders Set a Unified Agenda: AX/DX, AI, and Digital Assets
South Korea's top financial holding groups opened the year with a single message: move faster on AI transformation (AX), digital transformation (DX), and take a clear position in digital assets. The signal came through New Year addresses and a meeting with the Financial Supervisory Service leadership, outlining a shared playbook for competition, risk, and growth.
For finance leaders, the takeaway is simple. The next 12-24 months will set the pecking order in AI-driven operations and digital asset services. First movers will win customers, define standards, and secure premium margins. Late adopters will be price takers.
Shinhan: "Great Challenge 2030" and the AX/DX Push
Shinhan Financial Group Chairman Jin Ok-dong set the tone with a clear mandate: "Great Challenge 2030: Bold Execution Toward the Future of Finance." His call is to speed up AX and DX, recognizing that technology is restructuring financial order.
The implication: embed AI into core processes now-credit, collections, fraud, CX-and shift from experiments to scaled deployment. Treat data quality, model governance, and integration as the main constraints, not budget.
Hana: Won-Based Stablecoin and Early Infrastructure
Hana Financial Group Chairman Ham Young-joo stressed urgency. He pointed to the reorganization of digital finance and urged proactive design of a won-based stablecoin ecosystem-covering issuance, distribution, usage, and circulation.
If you operate in payments, treasury, or transaction banking, this is a direct call to build rails, compliance, and liquidity models ahead of the curve. Early infrastructure earns network effects and cross-sell opportunities once utility is proven. For policy context, monitor updates from the Financial Services Commission (FSC) and the Bank of Korea.
KB: "Transition & Expansion" and First-Mover Advantage
KB Financial Group Chairman Yang Jong-hee framed the year as "Transition & Expansion," pushing for early leadership in AI and digital asset markets. "In newly forming markets, securing customers and business opportunities first is critical," he said.
Translation for operators: prioritize time-to-market over perfect architecture. Get viable AI products into client hands and iterate. In digital assets, pilot use cases with measurable utility-settlement speed, collateral mobility, or treasury efficiency.
Woori: AX at Scale and Productive Finance
Woori Financial Group Chairman Lim Jong-ryong put group-wide AX initiatives at the center, with investment in AI capabilities and new digital industries. He also reinforced a broader mission: fuel productive finance while meeting social responsibilities through inclusive finance.
That balance matters. AI can sharpen underwriting, improve capital allocation to growth sectors, and widen access for underserved customers-if paired with upgraded risk controls and transparent model monitoring.
Productive Finance: The Common Thread
Across groups, productive finance emerged as the anchor strategy. The message: channel capital and services to high-impact, real-economy outcomes-backed by stronger risk management, better screening, and tighter IB processes.
As Chairman Yang noted, paradigm shifts become growth only with disciplined feasibility checks and advanced risk systems. Chairman Ham echoed this with a focus on organizational change and stronger IB, credit, and risk capabilities. AI can multiply each of these-if governance keeps pace.
What Finance Leaders Should Do Now
- Set an AX/DX roadmap tied to P&L. Identify top three AI use cases by ROI (e.g., risk scoring, fraud detection, RM copilot). Assign owners, budgets, and quarterly targets.
- Upgrade data and model risk. Build model inventories, validation playbooks, and explainability standards. Treat data lineage and consent as product features, not compliance afterthoughts.
- Pilot a won-based stablecoin workflow. Stand up lightweight pilots for issuance, distribution, and settlement with clear KYC/AML controls. Map liquidity, custody, and reconciliation end-to-end.
- Prepare for tokenized assets and custody. Define custody models, segregation, and recovery procedures. Train legal, ops, and risk teams on smart contract and key management exposures.
- Connect AI to productive finance. Use AI to improve borrower discovery, sector screening, and early warning signals. Tie capital allocation to measurable productivity metrics.
- Go first where switching costs are low. Launch AI copilots for frontline staff, automate credit memos, or deploy decision support in IB coverage. Speed matters more than polish.
- Build compliance by design. Embed VASP-related requirements, transaction monitoring, and sanctions screening into architecture so digital asset products scale safely.
- Reskill at scale. Stand up role-based AI training for risk, finance, ops, and front office. Create AI playbooks for daily workflows so adoption sticks.
Execution Notes
- Funding: Reallocate from low-impact IT projects to AI platforms, data pipelines, and control frameworks.
- Vendors vs. in-house: Use vendors for speed; keep core IP (data, models, decision logic) in-house. Negotiate portability.
- Measurement: Attach each initiative to a metric-cost-to-serve, loss rates, time-to-yes, NPS, assets under custody, or settlement times.
- Change management: Make AI the default option in processes. Reward adoption. Retire legacy steps aggressively.
The Bottom Line
South Korea's financial leaders have set a clear direction: scale AI, modernize the stack, and claim early ground in digital assets-while keeping productive finance at the center. The firms that operationalize this faster will write the new playbook for profitability and risk discipline.
If you need a head start on tools and upskilling, explore practical options here: AI tools for finance.
Your membership also unlocks:
