According to news from Deep Tide TechFlow on December 30, as reported by the Chosun Ilbo, the default rate on credit loans for K-Bank's cryptocurrency-related accounts has reached a historic high. Data obtained by Congressman Kim Jae-sup from the Financial Supervisory Service shows that as of the third quarter of 2024, the personal credit loan default rate for K-Bank's cryptocurrency-related accounts was 1.28%, with a default balance of 47.4 billion won.
As the fiat custody bank for Upbit, South Korea's largest cryptocurrency exchange, K-Bank has a more serious default situation among low-credit clients (KCB credit score below 50%) in its cryptocurrency-related accounts, with a default rate of 2.2% and a default amount of 34.4 billion won, which is more than three times the default rate of high-credit customers (0.6%).
K-Bank plans to make a third attempt at an IPO before February 2025. Despite the recent boom in the cryptocurrency market being favorable to it, excessive reliance on Upbit and poor health indicators may pose obstacles to the listing. The bank's bad loan balance in the third quarter reached 207.2 billion won, a year-on-year increase of 29.2%, far exceeding that of competitors KakaoBank (187.4 billion won) and Toss Bank (115.4 billion won). Financial industry insiders suggest that K-Bank needs to improve its overall default rate by increasing mortgages and loans to high-credit customers to prepare for the upcoming IPO.