Woori Financial Group said on the 21st that it has invested 34.7 trillion won ($24.3 billion) in productive and inclusive finance, reaching 38.5% of its five-year target within a single year.
Chairman Lim Jong-yong reviewed the results of the group's Future Shared Growth Project at the October meeting of its advanced strategic industries finance council, held the previous day at the company's headquarters in Seoul. Woori Financial had earlier pledged to invest 90 trillion won in productive and inclusive finance by 2030.
Of the total, 33.3 trillion won went to productive finance. Woori Bank provided 13.4 trillion won to small and mid-sized enterprises, more than half of the 26.6 trillion won it supplied this year. The bank also deployed more than 500 billion won to the National Growth Fund.
Inclusive finance accounted for 1.4 trillion won. The group extended the largest volume of New Hope Holssi loans, a policy lending program for low-income and low-credit borrowers, among Korean banks and wrote off 280 billion won in long-overdue debt. "The past year was spent doing everything we could to channel funds to where they were needed, when they were needed," Lim said. "Draw up next year's plans so that we can bring about structural change in how we lend, including the share going to small and mid-sized enterprises and to regional areas."