Hyundai Card, the first Korean financial company to export its own artificial intelligence (AI) platform overseas, is drawing up a blueprint for the launch of "Universe 2.0." The plan is to develop its existing AI platform "Universe" into an agentic AI system that supports companies in setting goals, deriving tasks and establishing execution strategies. The company also intends to further expand its partner base going forward.
According to the financial industry Tuesday, Hyundai Card is pursuing a plan to upgrade Universe into an agentic AI platform. While the existing Universe supported individual marketing tasks such as "find the customer segment best suited for cosmetics brand marketing," it will now evolve toward assisting a broader scope of decision-making.
For example, when a company presents a goal such as "what strategy is needed to expand sales this year," the AI will be able to derive the tasks needed to achieve the goal, analyze which customer segments to target, and even design campaign methods, the company said.
Hyundai Card is also preparing "Universe for Partners," an AI package dedicated to partner companies. Like Japan's Sumitomo Mitsui Card Company (SMCC), it allows partner companies to select and use only the specific AI models they need, without adopting the entire Universe platform. The customer data held by partner companies can be structured into Hyundai Card's PDI tag system, and AI models tailored to each company's purpose can be applied. Partner companies can leverage Hyundai Card's capabilities for marketing without having to build a separate data analytics platform from scratch.
Hyundai Card plans to first pursue adoption centered on private label credit card (PLCC) partners. Hyundai Card judges that combining its AI analytics capabilities with the customer touchpoints held by each partner will enable hyper-personalized marketing that individual companies would find difficult to implement on their own.
Hyundai Card is also focusing on companywide AI transformation (AX). Until now, AI use has been concentrated on data-driven work such as marketing and risk management. Going forward, the company plans to broaden the scope of application to all operations, including design, legal, human resources and public relations. Ted Chung, vice chairman of Hyundai Card, stressed at a recent Hyundai Card group forum, "Many companies proclaim digital transformation, but there is a big difference between makeup that changes only the appearance and change that alters the skeleton." He emphasized, "Hyundai Card has been pursuing 'Total Digital Transformation' that redesigns the very foundation of the organization."
In Korea's financial sector, competition in AX is spreading, moving beyond using AI as a work-support tool to integrating it across core operations. Against this backdrop, observers say Hyundai Card is strengthening its identity as a tech company by upgrading its own AI platform and expanding it into overseas markets. An official in the card industry explained, "While it is common for card companies to apply AI to marketing and screening, Hyundai Card is differentiated in that it has connected this to exports," adding, "It is a case that shows AI can become a new revenue model beyond being a cost-reduction tool for card companies."
