Yoon Ja-young
Kyobo Life Insurance Chairman and CEO Shin Chang-jae
Kyobo Life Insurance Chairman and CEO Shin Chang-jae has received an international award in recognition of his ethical management over more than two decades, the insurer announced on Monday.
Singh received the Global Ethics and Stakeholder Commitment Award at the 2024 Geneva Entrepreneurship Forum held at the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Geneva headquarters on June 27.
The forum is organized by international organizations such as the International Council for Small and Medium Enterprises (ICSB), ILO, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, and the International Trade Centre, and recognizes entrepreneurs from around the world who pursue social justice, a new priority issue set by the ILO, through ethical and stakeholder-centric management. After reviewing candidates nominated by various countries, Singh was selected as the first recipient of the award.
Chairman of the judging committee, Winslow Sargent, a former ICSB chairman, called Shin a pioneer of stakeholder-centric management, noting that for the past 24 years, Shin has led Kyobo Life Insurance with a global-standard ethical management philosophy and achieved coexistence and development among customers, insurance agents, employees, shareholders, the local community and the government.
Shin said that since he became president of the company in 2000, he has promoted customer-centric management and placed emphasis on ethical management. He emphasized that ethical management should go beyond compliance with laws and regulations to ultimately lead to greater success in order to benefit all stakeholders, and that there is still much to achieve.
Chairman Kyobo has an unusual career history, having gone from being a medical school professor working as a birth attendant to becoming CEO of an insurance company. In 2000, when insurance companies were struggling in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis and fraudulent business practices in the industry, Chairman Kyobo took over the company’s leadership and established the Ethics Charter, which became the starting point for ethical management.
Its commitment to ethical management has earned it high praise from government agencies, industry leaders and overseas, and its contributions to the global insurance industry have been recognized, leading to its inductee into the Insurance Hall of Fame in 2023.
