Yang Jong-hee, chairman of KB Financial, stressed accelerating the shift in business models and ways of working by using artificial intelligence (AI) as a strategic weapon, and that all executives and employees should be reborn as strategists and innovators to lead change.
Yang held the "first-half 2026 group executive workshop" on the 9th with 260 group executives in attendance. Yang said, "With the belief that all answers lie with customers, we will drive change with confident execution and must repay customers with expertise and competence that align with trust, the essence of finance."
KB Financial plans to move beyond the "Build-Up" phase, which focused on refining its business portfolio, and the "Value-Up" phase, which raised corporate value and shareholder value, to the "Level-Up" phase to leap forward as a higher-level financial group for all stakeholders, including customers, society, and shareholders.
The workshop began with a presentation on the "2026 group management strategy direction and management plan." It shared that AX must go beyond the simple adoption of AI technology to be embedded across the group's future strategies, and that providing stability to customers and society through a sustainable revenue base and thorough risk management is important.
This was followed by group WM (wealth management) and SME (corporate finance) sessions. In the WM session, amid a rapidly changing wealth management environment due to the acceleration of MoneyMove and the deepening concentration of wealth, participants discussed directions to protect and grow the public's wealth, centered on the "ONE KB WM strategy," which brings together group capabilities in banking, securities, insurance, and asset management.
A special lecture by outside experts was also held. A JP Morgan economist assessed global economic trends and the outlook for the Korean economy, and experts from various fields, including a science influencer, author, and translator, delivered lectures on the themes "the boundary between science and technology in the AI era," "the value of stories that are hard for technology to replace," and "the importance of communication without mistranslation in the AI era."