[1mm Financial Talk] The Reason Hana Bank Changed Department Names to Hangul

Hana Bank Headquarters Building Exterior View

[Asia Economy Reporter Song Seung-seop] Hana Bank changed the names of some departments previously written in English to Korean earlier this month during its organizational restructuring. It seems the internal atmosphere at Hana Financial Group, which had advocated using English for names, department titles, and documents, has shifted.

According to the financial sector on the 12th, Hana Bank carried out a mid-year executive reshuffle and organizational restructuring earlier this month, strengthening its sales organization while slimming down its digital organization. At the group level, the Digital Retail Group was renamed the Digital Group. At the headquarters level, the DT Innovation Headquarters, DailyBanking Headquarters, Borrowing Headquarters, and Digital Experience Headquarters were renamed to Digital Support Headquarters (Strategy Planning), Digital Experience Headquarters (Execution), and Data & Partnership Investment Headquarters (Customer Data Analysis), respectively.

Hana Bank employees are paying attention to the change from English to Korean for department names in the restructuring plan. This is because Hana Bank has used English relatively more often than other financial companies in department tasks and document preparation. Hana Financial Group was also the first in the financial sector to introduce the English naming system. A Hana Bank official explained, "It was expressed intuitively for work efficiency."

The increased use of English at Hana Bank began under the policy emphasized by former Hana Financial Group Chairman Kim Jung-tae. During his tenure, Kim set the goal of strengthening global competitiveness. Internally, there was talk that even the language should be aligned to English. Consequently, early last year, former Hana Bank President Ji Sung-kyu even considered writing some documents in English.

However, voices arose among internal employees criticizing the excessive and meaningless use of English. Some argued that using English documents for communication and reporting among Korean employees was far from globalization. There were also opinions that Korean documents should be used when communicating with financial authorities or domestic companies, as using English increased the workload.

Problems were also raised regarding the difficulty of clear and precise communication due to excessive English use. When the digital organization names were previously disclosed, there was a question whether ‘Borrowing’ (빌리는) was correct grammatically in English, or if ‘Lending’ (빌려주는) would be more appropriate. Hana Bank explained that the name was chosen with the customer’s perspective in mind, but criticism continued that the department roles and names did not clearly match.