"Leading the DX Paradigm" KT and Shinhan Bank Exchange Shares Worth 437.5 Billion Won

23 Business Collaborations Including Financial DX and Platforms
Realizing Future-Oriented Stores and Metaverse Alliance

From the right, Jongwook Park, President of KT's Management Planning Division, and Okdong Jin, President of Shinhan Bank, are posing for a commemorative photo at the 'KT-Shinhan Bank Strategic Partnership Signing Ceremony' held on the 17th at Shinhan Bank's headquarters in Jung-gu, Seoul. Photo by KT

[Asia Economy Reporter Cha Min-young] KT is promoting a future finance digital transformation (DX) business collaboration with Shinhan Bank based on digital platform technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), extended virtual worlds (metaverse), non-fungible tokens (NFT), robotics, and big data.

On the 17th, KT announced that it signed a strategic partnership for future growth DX business cooperation with Shinhan Bank and decided to acquire shares. Considering that it is an unlisted company, the scale of share acquisition is 2.08% of Shinhan Bank’s shares, with an acquisition amount of 437.5 billion KRW. Shinhan Bank also acquired 5.46% of KT shares in response.

The agreement ceremony was held at Shinhan Bank’s headquarters located in Jung-gu, Seoul, with key executives including Park Jong-wook, Head of KT’s Management Planning Division (President), and Jin Ok-dong, President of Shinhan Bank, in attendance.

Through this cooperation, KT and Shinhan Bank will accelerate 23 joint projects focusing on future finance DX and new platform businesses in areas such as AI, metaverse, NFT, big data, and robotics.

First, in the future finance DX field, KT’s AI capabilities such as data analysis and natural language processing (NLP) and Shinhan Bank’s financial data will be combined to complete differentiated business models. A representative example is the finance-specialized AICC (AI Contact Center), and they plan to actively pursue mid- to long-term cooperation such as developing language models that can improve work productivity and customer convenience based on AI.

Shinhan Bank is already operating a future-oriented branch called ‘Digi-log,’ where AI bankers lead customer service. By adding KT’s innovative solutions such as AI, robotics, and media walls, it is expected to be upgraded and perfected into a new concept of future-oriented branches.

The two companies will also develop specialized telecommunication and financial convergence services for small business owners based on big data. They plan to develop and launch an alternative credit evaluation model linked with location-based commercial district data from KT’s Jalnagae platform.

Furthermore, they intend to provide lifestyle-oriented services through new platform businesses such as the metaverse. For example, by establishing a metaverse alliance, they will integrate financial infrastructure into KT’s metaverse platform and jointly issue distribution points for both companies’ metaverse platforms. Customers’ activity range can also be expanded through point exchanges linked with external partner metaverse platforms. Additionally, they are reviewing the construction of a differentiated real estate metaverse platform by combining commercial district information owned by KT, and planning a joint project to build an NFT-based digital asset issuance and trading platform.

Utilizing KT’s blockchain technology, the two companies will jointly promote an electronic document business based on mutual trust. They plan to discover specific business models not only for storing electronic documents composed of various types of unstructured data such as electronic contracts, electronic certificates, and mobile electronic notifications but also in connection with the certified electronic document intermediary business.

In the future, they will promote a global platform business. By combining the fintech capabilities and innovative technologies possessed by both companies, they will establish a joint SI fund (strategic investment fund) and pursue investment and consulting businesses for domestic and overseas ventures with technological excellence.

Subsequently, to ensure stable joint project execution and discover additional cooperation tasks, a separate joint research and development (R&D) task force (TF) will be organized. It will be composed of KT’s professional engineers and Shinhan Bank’s financial infrastructure experts, and based on this, additional future convergence finance DX services such as AICC engine development and voice authentication financial infrastructure development will be created.

Park Jong-wook, Head of KT’s Management Planning Division, said, “We will present a financial DX model based on synergy between the country’s top financial group and the largest digital platform company,” adding, “We will open a new paradigm of DX growth with Shinhan Bank through differentiated digital convergence services centered on customers.”