Korea Investment & Securities eyes Musinsa, Kakao Bank, Toss and beyond: 'Product power is the ultimate weapon in the AI era'

Korea Investment & Securities has long been known as a traditional powerhouse catering to high-net-worth clients. Yet today, seven out of every 10 new customers joining the firm are opening a brokerage account for the first time in their lives, and customers in their 20s and 30s now account for nearly half of the total.

The shift reflects a deliberate push to widen customer acquisition channels — through partnerships with major internet banks including Kakao Bank, Toss Bank and K bank, as well as with the virtual asset exchange Coinone and the financial information platform Investing.com, all offering integrated account-opening services. More recently, the firm collaborated with the fashion platform Musinsa, effectively erasing the boundaries of what counts as a "financial" channel.

Kwak Jin, the eBiz division head leading Korea Investment & Securities' channel diversification drive, laid out three criteria the firm uses to select partnership candidates in an interview at the company's Yeouido headquarters in Seoul on Wednesday.

"We focus primarily on market influence — a monthly active user base of at least 10 million, whether the partner holds a MyData license to analyze customers' financial behavior patterns, and whether it is the No. 1 player in its sector," Kwak said. "We are also exploring new partnerships with a range of retail platforms."

Korea Investment & Securities has traditionally been perceived as skewing toward customers in their 40s to 60s and high-net-worth individuals. But that perception has been changing. "Our partnership with Kakao Bank in 2019 and with Toss Bank in 2022 marked the real turning point for bringing in younger customers through internet banks, and now nearly half our customers are in their 20s and 30s," Kwak said. "In five or ten years, those same customers will be in their 40s and 50s, so we are also thinking hard about what it takes to turn them into long-term, high-quality clients."

Kwak's answer is personalization. "The core is analyzing and tracking the assets a customer holds, the stocks they follow, and their in-app behavioral data to quickly identify what they need," he said. "We assess what stage of the investment journey a customer is at and deliver differentiated services through a personalization engine."

For customers just starting out in equity investing, too many choices can cause fatigue. "Customers have a life cycle, and building a long-term retention relationship requires guiding them through experiences and asset growth that match that cycle," Kwak said.

He added: "For example, if a customer has been sitting in a short-term commercial paper product for a long time, we send a tailored message when a specific event occurs, such as an interest rate hike."

AI is the primary tool for delivering that personalization, and competition among brokerages to offer AI-driven investment services has intensified. Korea Investment & Securities already operates an AI market analysis service called "How's the Market Now?" Kwak spoke candidly about the challenges the firm faces in this space.

"AI technology itself will keep advancing, and within about six months the entire industry will converge to a similar baseline," he said. So what sets Korea Investment & Securities' AI apart? "Our strength lies in a well-balanced business structure that combines asset management capabilities, deal sourcing and investment banking with wealth management," Kwak said. "In terms of product sourcing alone, we are confident we are among the best not just in Korea but across Asia — and that is a domain technology-based platform companies cannot easily replicate."

"No matter how precisely AI analyzes a customer and recommends the right product, it is useless if the product itself does not exist — and conversely, having a product lineup means nothing if you lack the ability to match it to the right customer," he added. "Having customer touchpoints, product sourcing and asset management all within a single portfolio is our differentiator." Korea Investment & Securities plans to build on its AI market and stock analysis services, ultimately rolling out a conversational service based on each customer's individual asset holdings.

Virtual assets are another area the firm identifies as a core future growth engine. Korea Investment & Securities recently acquired a 20 percent stake in the virtual asset exchange Coinone, becoming its third-largest shareholder. The move is part of a four-way alliance that also includes the overseas exchange OKX and game company Com2uS Holdings.

Coinone's market share still lags well behind the two dominant players, Upbit and Bithumb. "Coinone has a lower market share, but it has never had a major security incident since its founding — it is a stable company," Kwak said. "It also has the strength of owning its own blockchain technology and virtual asset infrastructure."

"OKX has a global network, and Com2uS Holdings has strong content capabilities through gaming," he added. "We bring know-how in sourcing and developing diverse investment products, along with high stability and credibility. When these capabilities come together, the synergy will be significant."

The first tangible result has already arrived: customers can now trade Korean equities directly within the Coinone app. "Customers who have been trading virtual assets on Coinone will naturally have an interest in stock trading as well," Kwak said. "Instead of switching between platforms, they can now handle both virtual assets and stocks in one place — and the early response has been very positive."

The legislative timeline for the Digital Asset Basic Act and STO-related laws remains fluid. Asked about the possibility of regulatory delays, Kwak said: "From a development standpoint, you normally have to wait for the law, then the guidelines and rules, before you can build. But we are constantly thinking about what we can prepare on the non-development side ahead of that."

The Coinone partnership is a prime example. "Even before the Digital Asset Basic Act was in place, we saw that many customers inside the Coinone app had an interest in equities, and we launched the linked service right away," he said. "Expanding customer touchpoints and upgrading the platform within the existing regulatory framework is something we can do regardless of where the legislation stands." He added: "It would be great if the regulations are put in place quickly, but if they are delayed, we will simply use that time to raise our level of preparation as high as possible."

On virtual asset taxation, Kwak said the firm's basic policy is to "proactively build in features that present tax information in an easy-to-understand way, so customers do not have to calculate the tax treatment of each asset class themselves."