The South Korean banking sector is the latest to be taken by storm by new entrants in the form of IT and retail firms. After giants including e-commerce company Alibaba and investment holding company Tencent disrupted the Chinese banking sector, the Korean Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) has announced that it will introduce the country's first internet-only bank by the end of 2015.
The announcement has split the South Korea banking sector in two – into the lenders that are joining the consortia competing for the licence, and the lenders that are ignoring them completely. To the second group, building digital banking organically is the only strategy that makes sense.
