Lee Seon-hoon, CEO of Shinhan Investment Securities, said in a New Year address on Thursday that the firm is standing at a springboard for a new opportunity called issued commercial paper this year.

"We must take the lead in a virtuous cycle in which we boldly supply venture capital for growth to companies and transparently share the fruits of growth with investors," he said. He asked staff to approach their work with a focus on his main responsibilities, including deal sourcing, pipeline building, support for corporate database solutions, and advancing risk management and screening systems.

He also called for internal controls to become habitual. Lee said the firm has built a strong internal control process system over the past year and it is still ongoing. He said a bottom-up change in internal controls is needed this year.

He added that work habits of each employee should come together to become departmental habits and then take root as a culture across the organisation. He said when professional ethics and a sense of responsibility harden into healthy habits across the organisation, internal controls will become a strength rather than a weakness.

He also stressed the importance of technology. Lee said success or failure in the securities industry once depended on capital, people and products. He said technology represented by artificial intelligence and digital has become an essential condition to survive in the financial industry.

He said asset management without AI and digital technology has limits, and investment without data analysis is nothing more than vague expectation. Lee said Shinhan Investment Securities must use this year, as AI transformation accelerates in earnest, as a turning point to be reborn as a brokerage where technology is central.

He asked the firm this year to spend more time prioritising customer trust and the principles of internal controls over short-term profits, and to check the stability of processes and systems.