Shinhan, KB, Hana and Woori financial groups are facing difficulties in attracting young engineers equipped with digital skills, due to their rigid corporate culture and tough financial regulations.

Despite the nation’s four largest banking groups’ efforts to find such people to engineer their digital transformation as the trend for contactless transactions grows due to the COVID-19 pandemic, IT experts are choosing to work for tech firms, rather than becoming bank employees.

According to industry sources, hundreds of experienced engineers and designers rushed to visit Naver Financial’s website between May 11 and 15 to apply for about 30 positions available at the IT giant’s financial subsidiary.

In contrast, all 15 KB employees sent to KakaoBank in 2016 refused to return to their previous workplace late last year, despite attractive incentives from their previous employer.

These cases may seem weird to those who remember when banks were popular workplaces here because of their stability and high salaries.

Korean students, however, are choosing not to work for conventional financial firms anymore.

A survey of 1,045 university students done by Incruit in June showed Kakao was their most-favored company, followed by Samsung Electronics, Naver and CJ ENM.

The local job market information provider said the respondents mentioned Kakao’s growth potential and work-life balance as the biggest reasons they want to work for the IT firm.

In the survey, none of financial firms were among the top 10.

Up until of 2017 when the Export-Import Bank of Korea ranked 10th, financial firms had regularly been in the top 10.

KB Kookmin Bank was on the list from 2006 to 2015, and Shinhan Bank was placed ninth in the same survey done in 2011.

However, their corporate cultures and regulations have led talented jobseekers to turn away from them.

“I had to do what bank employees ordered, and had to apologize when they had complaints, so I became withdrawn and suffered from an excessive workload,” an engineer who moved to a foreign company from a financial group’s IT subsidiary said on condition of anonymity.

Some engineers complained of the strict network separation policy imposed on banks, because it has barred them from telecommuting or working on a flexitime basis, despite the work-from-home trend amid the COVID-19 pandemic.