The new headquarters of Hana Financial Group, the group's latest landmark, came into view on the 30th upon arrival in Cheongna International City in Incheon. Its wave-like curved exterior walls and rounded terraces stood out from a distance. Inside the lobby, natural light poured through a central atrium open to the ceiling, reaching a lounge one floor below ground.
Hana Financial has opened what it calls its "Cheongna era," the product of 14 years of preparation. Starting with Hana Financial Group (086790), about 2,200 employees from 10 affiliates will move in gradually through the end of the year. Combined with staff already at the group's integrated data center in Cheongna, about 4,000 finance and information technology specialists will be based in Incheon.
The headquarters, spanning seven basement levels and 15 floors above ground with a total floor area of 128,503 square meters, offers about 1,100 pyeong (roughly 3,640 square meters) of usable space on each work floor, three times that of the group's former Myeong-dong office. Departments and affiliates share the wide horizontal floors, and internal staircases connect levels so that employees run into one another as they move around. A smart work center on the first floor features unassigned seating, a 5G wireless network and cloud-based virtual desktop infrastructure. "We removed the physical boundaries between affiliates and departments to turn the entire building into one large collaboration platform," said Choi Young-neung, a team leader in Hana Bank's Cheongna headquarters division.
The complex is also open to the local community. A 1.1-kilometer walkway running from the first to the 15th floor and a rooftop garden will be open to the public, and the company plans to host cultural and sports events on its lawn plaza. Local economic benefits are expected as well. The direct and indirect economic impact of the move to Cheongna is estimated at about 3.4 trillion won ($2.4 billion) over the next 10 years.
Across from the headquarters stands the group's integrated data center, which consolidates the IT infrastructure of its affiliates. Rows of 650 server units filled the computer rooms on the third through sixth floors. A separate computer room for an artificial intelligence data center is planned for the seventh floor. "This is not simply a move to a new building but a starting point for creating new ways of working and communicating through space," a Hana Financial official said. "We will write the group's next 100 years of history together with all stakeholders, including customers, the local community and employees."
