Korea’s largest bank deployed MySQL Enterprise Edition to improve cost and operational efficiencies and set a trend in open-source banking solutions.
Introduction & Background
KB Kookmin Bank is a leading commercial bank in South Korea and the largest by total assets, offering a wide range of personal, corporate, and international banking services. Headquartered in Seoul, it serves over 30 million customers and has over 3,000 ATMs and 1,100 branches across the country, with additional offices in the UK, USA, Australia, and throughout South-East Asia.
Formed in 2001 through the merger of Kookmin Bank and Korea Housing Bank, KB subsequently acquired various financial companies including credit card, insurance, and securities firms, transforming into the KB Financial Group in 2008. The bank’s goal is to become the trusted financial partner for life for its clients, developing products and services based on its core values of customer-centricity, expertise, innovation, trust and integrity, and shared growth.
In 2022, KB Kookmin Bank upgraded its personal finance application, KB Star Banking, to provide customers with comprehensive financial services, including the core services across KB Financial Group’s nine affiliates, in a faster and more convenient way.
Business Challenges & Goals
One of KB Star Banking's key offerings is KB Star Club, a customer membership program that rewards customers based on their transactional history and usage of the group’s financial services. The group membership system collects extensive data from across KB Financial Group companies, and processes it each month to assign customer membership levels and provide personalized preferential benefits.
To address growing business demands and manage increasing transaction volumes, KB Kookmin Bank required a more robust and stable database solution capable of handling large-scale data extraction based on specific parameters. The bank needed to ensure data integrity and consistency, as well as precise segmentation, to accurately determine customer levels and their associated rewards.
Additionally, the group membership system needed to meet the security and compliance standards set by the Korea Financial Supervisory Service.
While the bank traditionally uses a variety of proprietary databases including Oracle, IBM DB2 and UDB, it wanted to break the conservative trend in the financial sector and improve cost efficiencies by exploring open-source databases for eventual use in its major financial platforms.
Considering the service-based nature of the financial sector, systems support was of the highest importance, not only for database operations but also for immediate technical support in the event of unexpected issues.
Business Results & Metrics
KB Kookmin Bank deployed MySQL Enterprise Edition as the backbone for the KB Star Club group membership system, improving application stability and availability, while minimizing costs and driving IT resource efficiency.
By implementing MySQL Enterprise Edition, KB Kookmin Bank established itself as an industry pioneer by breaking away from traditional finance sector norms and embracing an open-source database solution. The strategic move not only underscores KB’s innovative approach—allowing it to expand its business domestically and internationally—but also sets a new standard for technological advancement in the banking industry.
With MySQL Enterprise Edition the bank achieves fast and efficient monthly processing of huge amounts of complex transactional and related financial data, for example credit card usage and bank deposit information, from all nine KB Financial Group-affiliated companies. This ensures high levels of data integrity and accurate assignment of customer membership levels.
By implementing MySQL Enterprise Edition, KB Kookmin Bank ensured compliance with the strict and complex requirements designated by the Korea Financial Supervisory Service for operations and disaster recovery, validating over 300 test items during a rigorous proof-of-concept phase.
Using MySQL Enterprise Edition’s open source database, KB Kookmin Bank reduced IT overhead for its group membership rewards program while providing a stable platform with minimal management and maintenance costs.
The bank increased IT infrastructure availability by leveraging MySQL Replication to create redundancy for load balancing and disaster recovery purposes—enhancing operational resilience and ensuring uninterrupted service for customers.
KB Kookmin Bank significantly improved and accelerated its backup processes using MySQL Enterprise Backup, ensuring robust protection of critical financial data and enabling rapid recovery capabilities in case of disasters.
The bank ensures smooth operational performance of the group membership platform and minimizes downtime by leveraging dedicated expertise from MySQL Support. The specialized technical assistance, available 24/7, is crucial for managing unanticipated problems and preventing service interruptions.
Why MySQL Enterprise Edition?
For its critical group membership program, KB Kookmin Bank conducted a thorough evaluation of solutions from several database providers, including open-source database systems such as PostgreSQL, MariaDB, and MongoDB. It selected MySQL Enterprise Edition because of its proven stability, robust technical support, low cost, and comprehensive enterprise features including advanced replication, secure backup solutions, and efficient monitoring tools.
“We attached great importance to disrupting conservative norms in the financial sector and switching to an open-source database. MySQL Enterprise Edition had the robustness we needed to efficiently collect and process data from all nine entities in the KB Financial Group. The MySQL Support service played a pivotal role in our decision-making process,” Sunghyun Choi said.
Partner
KB Kookmin Bank selected Oracle Partner Rockplace for the implementation of its MySQL Enterprise Edition database.
Rockplace’s support, in collaboration with the MySQL Sales and SE teams, was crucial during the detailed proof-of-concept phase. This included seven months of preparation and testing to meet the compliance standards of the Korea Financial Supervisory Service and the functional requirements of the bank's executives and operations team. Rockplace also provided comprehensive consulting services for system development, assisted with user acceptance testing, facilitated training, and led the technical implementation.