growth

Feb. 1 (Asia Today) — Hana Financial Group said Sunday it will accelerate efforts to boost performance at its non-bank affiliates this year, marking a pivotal shift toward more balanced growth as its banking unit continues to dominate earnings.

Last year the group posted a record net profit of 4 trillion won (about $2.9 billion), up 7.1% from a year earlier, driven primarily by strong results at Hana Bank. But performance at securities, insurance and card units lagged, dragging the non-bank contribution to overall profit down to about 12% from nearly 16% the previous year.

“We expect the normalization of performance for the group’s non-bank subsidiaries to begin in earnest starting this year,” the group said, calling 2026 the first year of “non-bank normalization.”

Under Chairman Ham Young-joo, Hana has set a target of raising non-bank profit share to 30% by 2027. But with the sector’s recent weak showing, he has emphasized to employees that “the non-banking sector cannot continue as it is.”

Hana Securities saw net profit fall nearly 6% last year to 212 billion won (about $147 million), while Hana Card’s profit slipped about 2% to 217.7 billion won (about $151 million). Hana Insurance’s deficit widened to 47 billion won. Hana Life Insurance did return to profit, posting 15.2 billion won (about $32.5 million) after a 7 billion won loss (about $4.8 million) the prior year, but its contribution remains limited.

To strengthen non-bank performance this year, the group said it is laying groundwork to secure profitability-focused growth engines and improve asset quality. Chairman Ham said non-bank results will be “key to improving the group’s return on equity,” projecting an 11-12% ROE if sufficient returns can be generated relative to capital.

Moves already under way include a newly launched commercial paper issue by Hana Securities, laying the foundation for broader venture capital supply, and plans to contribute about 18 trillion won (about $12.44 billion) this year to productive finance, including direct corporate investments.

Hana Card is also poised to play a role in a planned stablecoin consortium, with its distribution and payment functions seen as essential to linking stablecoins with the real economy. Last year, the card unit signed agreements with partners including EQBR and TravelWallet to explore stablecoin-based payment and settlement services.

In the insurance sector, the group is exploring acquisitions to build scale. It participated in due diligence for Lotte Insurance and recently submitted a letter of intent to acquire Yebyeol Insurance, potentially expanding its insurance portfolio.

A financial industry insider said Hana’s push to create synergies across its wealth management and capital markets divisions could help its non-bank units evolve into top-tier players – a shift that could help lift group net profit beyond the 5 trillion won (about $3.46 billion) mark over time.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

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Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260202010000254

ORLANDO, Fla. — President Trump’s crackdown on immigration contributed to a year-to-year drop in the nation’s growth rate as the U.S. population reached nealry 342 million people in 2025, according to population estimates released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The 0.5% growth rate for 2025 was a sharp drop from 2024’s almost 1% growth rate, which was the highest since 2001 and was fueled by immigration. The 2024 estimates put the U.S. population at 340 million people.

Immigration increased by 1.3 million people last year, compared with 2024’s increase of 2.8 million people. The census report did not distinguish between legal and illegal immigration.

In the past 125 years, the lowest growth rate was in 2021, during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, when the U.S. population grew by just 0.16%, or 522,000 people, and immigration increased by just 376,000 people because of travel restrictions into the U.S. Before that, the lowest growth rate was just under 0.5% in 1919 at the height of the Spanish flu.

Tuesday’s data release comes as researchers have been trying to determine the effects of the second Trump administration’s immigration crackdown after the Republican president returned to the White House in January 2025. Trump made the surge of migrants at the southern border a central issue in his winning 2024 presidential campaign.

The numbers made public Tuesday reflect change from July 2024 to July 2025, covering the end of President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration and the first half of Trump’s first year back in office.

The figures capture a period that reflects the beginning of enforcement surges in Los Angeles and Portland, Ore., but do not capture the impact on immigration after the Trump administration’s crackdowns began in Chicago; New Orleans; Memphis, Tenn.; and Minneapolis, Minn..

The 2025 numbers were a jarring divergence from 2024, when net international migration accounted for 84% of the nation’s 3.3 million-person increase from the year before. The jump in immigration two years ago was partly because of a new method of counting that added people who were admitted for humanitarian reasons.

“They do reflect recent trends we have seen in out-migration, where the numbers of people coming in is down and the numbers going out is up,” Eric Jensen, a senior research scientist at the Census Bureau, said last week.

Unlike the once-a-decade census, which determines how many congressional seats and Electoral College votes each state gets, as well as the distribution of $2.8 trillion in annual government funding, the population estimates are calculated from government records and internal Census Bureau data.

The release of the 2025 population estimates was delayed by the federal government shutdown last fall and comes at a challenging time for the Census Bureau and other U.S. statistical agencies. The bureau, which is the largest statistical agency in the U.S., lost about 15% of its workforce last year due to buyouts and layoffs that were part of cost-cutting efforts by the White House and its Department of Government Efficiency.

Other recent actions by the Trump administration, such as the firing of Erika McEntarfer as Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, have raised concerns about political meddling at U.S. statistical agencies. But Brookings demographer William Frey said the bureau’s staffers appear to have been “doing this work as usual without interference.”

“So I have no reason to doubt the numbers that come out,” Frey said.

Schneider writes for the Associated Press.