KT, Shinhan Bank enter $367 mn share swap deal for digitalization push

[Source: KT Corp. and Shinhan Financial Group]

South Korea’s top wireless company KT Corp. is backing digital transition of Shinhan Financial Group by entering equity-based partnership through a swap of shares worth 437.5 billion won ($366.8 million).

Under the deal signed on Monday, KT will acquire a 2.1 percent stake in Shinhan Financial Group and Shinhan Bank a 5.48 percent in KT.

KT shares closed 0.64 percent lower at 31,000 won in Seoul trading on Monday, and Shinhan Financial Group 1.15 percent down at 38,850 won.

The two companies will strengthen partnership to speed up 23 collabo projects in the field of artificial intelligence, metaverse, non-fungible tokens, big data and robot with focus on digital transformation and platform-based new businesses.

For digital transformation, KT will leverage its AI capabilities for data analysis and natural language processing to complete a differentiated business model based on the financial data of Shinhan Bank. Specifically, they will cooperate on development of AI contact center specialized in finance and AI-based language model in the long term.

Shinhan Bank expects the collaboration would help add KT’s innovative solutions in AI, robots and media wall to advance its future Digilog branches.

Based on bid data, they will develop an integrated communications and financial service for small merchants.

As for platform-based new business, services close to daily lives will be offered such as issuance or exchange of membership points linked to their metaverse platforms or others’. Establishing a new metaverse platform for real estate assets, issuing digital assets based on NFTs and building new trade platform are on the table.

To use the blockchain technology of KT, e-document business will also be explored for storage of various types of transactional document and certificates.

“With the country’s top financial group, KT will unveil various digital transformation models in the financial sector. Our customer-focused digital convergence service will open a new paradigm for growth of digital transformation,” said Park Jong-Ook, head of corporate planning group at KT.

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