iM Financial Group said on Jan. 28 it held the seventh ethics management awards ceremony for 2025 on Jan. 26 at its iM Financial Center in Jung-gu, Seoul, and selected iM Securities as the grand prize winner.

The ethics management award is a programme launched in January 2019, the first of its kind in the financial sector, to promote the group’s ethical management practice programme. It rewards affiliates that contribute to ethical management and help raise organisational transparency and credibility by strengthening internal controls. From this evaluation, the group added assessment items for internal controls and financial consumer protection to respond quickly to new external demands on social responsibility and to align with regulators’ drive to strengthen internal controls.

iM Financial has an ethics management award selection committee to choose winners in a fair and objective manner. It calculates scores through on-site inspections of compliance work and evaluations of annual ethical management implementation, and then conducts committee reviews.

iM Securities, the grand prize winner, set up an internal control committee within its board and implemented an accountability structure chart, laying the foundation for stronger internal controls. It has built trust with internal and external stakeholders by obtaining ISO37001 certification, the international standard for anti-bribery management systems, last year. It was also recognised for steadily working to advance its internal control system by pushing various activities such as promoting group-wide ethics campaigns.

The group selected iM Investment Partners, a non-financial affiliate, for a special prize. Despite an unfavourable environment in terms of scale and staffing, it made various efforts to embed ethical management and internal controls. It received a high evaluation in particular for being named a “faithful compliance VC” in a self-regulation assessment hosted by the Korea Venture Capital Association last year and for winning a ministerial commendation from the Ministry of SMEs and Startups.

iM Financial expanded the awards to include individuals as well as institutional prizes. After a comprehensive evaluation of individuals who contributed to running the ethics management award programme and strengthening internal controls through an open call for employees across all affiliates, it selected 3 employees from iM Bank, iM Securities and iM Investment Partners.

Hwang Byung-woo (황병우), chairman of iM Financial, said, “As stronger internal controls and financial consumer protection are emerging as key areas of ethical management, we will expand evaluation elements to effectively increase motivation to strengthen internal controls.” He added, “Having international standard ISO certifications for each affiliate means we have a global-level ethical and compliance management system, and we will continue to lead a transparent financial culture through the sustained practice of ethical management by all employees.”