Woori Financial Group is a Seoul-based banking and financial services holdings company and is the largest bank in South Korea.
As of May 2026, Woori Financial Group was South Korea’s fourth-largest financial services provider.
History
Woori has had a relatively short history as a financial institution. It was formed in 2001 from the forced merger of four predecessor commercial banks and an investment bank: Hanvit, Peace, Kwangju and Kyongnam Banks and Hanaro Investment Banking and their subsidiaries. The banks were taken over and recapitalised by the government because they had fallen below the Basel I Accord-mandated eight percent capital adequacy ratio. The South Korean Government, through the Korean Deposit Insurance Corporation, remains the primary investor as a result.[1]
This came about as a part of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, which affected the operations of virtually all banks and financial firms in South Korea.