KB Kookmin Bank said on Thursday it held a meeting of its outside director nomination committee and recommended 1 new outside director and 3 outside directors for reappointment as outside director candidates.

Yeon Tae-hoon (연태훈), a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute of Finance, was recommended as the final candidate for the new outside director post, which has a two-year term. The committee said it manages a pool of candidates with expertise in various fields through recommendations from external specialist organisations and others. It said it independently reviews and runs all procedures from forming the pool to making the final recommendation. The committee selected the final candidate through a total of 6 meetings and 3 rounds of screening and qualification verification procedures.

Yeon, recommended as the new outside director candidate, graduated from the department of economics at Seoul National University and earned a master’s and doctoral degree in economics at the University of Michigan in the United States. He then worked at the Korea Institute of Public Finance and the Korea Development Institute (KDI) and is now conducting research at the Korea Institute of Finance on the overall financial market, including capital markets and financial consumer protection.

In particular, he contributed to the enactment of the Financial Consumer Protection Act through proactive research in the area of financial consumer protection. His expertise has been recognised, including by publishing many papers and research reports such as “Measures to strengthen financial consumer protection” and “The need to strengthen financial consumer capacity and policy recommendations.”

He also served as an outside director at IBK Investment & Securities, Sh Suhyup Bank, Hyundai Card and Korea Growth Finance Investment Management, and worked as a deliberation committee member at the Credit Recovery Committee and as chair of the conflict management deliberation committee at the Financial Services Commission.

The committee said of the selection, "Under KB Kookmin Bank’s consumer protection principle that finance places the highest value on consumers’ rights and interests, we recommended Yeon as a new outside director candidate because he has a deep understanding of financial consumers and extensive experience to protect the rights and interests of consumers using financial products and services and to create a fair and trusted financial environment," it said.