WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Arsène
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Conglomerate Heir Just Wants to Fail ◈
Chapter 17
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“At last, I’ve managed to inflict a proper loss on the company.”
I smiled with satisfaction.
The Daeseung Microfinance Foundation.
The name sounded grand, but in reality, it would be little different from pouring money into a bottomless pit.
Recovery rate?
We would have to wait and see, but could it even exceed 50%?
Just imagining one trillion won evaporating and cracking my grandfather’s empire made the stress I had felt since becoming Vice Chairman melt away like snow.
“Of course, this alone won’t bring Daeseung down. It’s just wasting cash. The actual businesses are still doing well. In the end, I need to ruin the core businesses...”
My worries deepened, but I could celebrate this small achievement for today.
For the first time in a while, I felt truly at ease as I rolled around on my large bed.
.
In a semi-basement room in an old multi-family house in Seoul, a college student sobbed with her face buried between her knees.
Her single mother had suddenly been diagnosed with cancer.
The surgery cost well over ten million won, far beyond what she could afford on her part-time wages.
Both primary and secondary financial institutions had turned her away at the door.
The lending company she visited as a last hope demanded murderous interest rates.
At the end of her despair, she searched words like “quick cash” and “same-day loan” on her smartphone, and happened upon the name Daeseung Microfinance Foundation.
Only one day had passed since she submitted an application, half believing and half doubting.
“The loan was approved? Really? But the interest... 11% a year? What? Not 11, but 1? One percent a year? Wait. What do you mean... no collateral and no guarantor...?”
The consultant on the other end of the phone was remarkably calm and kind.
They even explained that she could start repaying it slowly after graduating and finding a job.
It might have been some new kind of scam.
But she had no other choice.
A few hours later, exactly twelve million won was deposited into her previously empty account.
Only after checking the transaction record again and again did she finally burst into the tears she had held back.
“Thank you... Thank you so much!”
She raised her tear-streaked face and picked up her smartphone.
Then, with trembling hands, she began writing a post on the university community board where she was active.
‘Thank you so much, Daeseung Microfinance Foundation.’
The post conveyed her mother’s illness, their desperate circumstances, and the loan approval that had come like a ray of light.
.
In a small office at Guro Digital Complex, three young entrepreneurs, exhausted after coding through several nights, received an email titled “Daeseung Microfinance Foundation Investment Confirmed” and embraced one another.
They had been rejected from government support programs time and again, while venture capital firms only wanted to steal their ideas.
Their innovative technology was at risk of dying against the wall of insufficient funding.
But Daeseung was different.
Instead of demanding complicated business plans or financial statements, it had seen their dreams and passion.
“With this investment... we can turn our idea into a prototype right away!”
.
“Sir, can you really lend me money at this rate, under these conditions? Without collateral?”
A middle-aged man who ran a small factory and dreamed of getting back on his feet reread the agreement over and over, unable to believe it.
.
The Daeseung Microfinance Foundation’s office resembled a battlefield, flooded day after day with inquiry calls and documents.
But rather than exhaustion, the employees’ faces were filled with a sense of mission.
They believed they were not loan officers, but people saving someone’s life.
“Team Leader, this applicant alone has five records of credit delinquency. On paper, they’re absolutely ineligible for a loan.”
“What caused the delinquency?”
“...Joint-and-several-guarantee debt from the applicant’s father’s business failure. It wasn’t the applicant’s fault.”
“Then approve it. Have you forgotten our foundation’s first principle? Look at people, not numbers. The Director said it personally.”
Instead of credit scores, the Daeseung Microfinance Foundation evaluated applicants’ stories and determination. Instead of collateral, it invested in their potential for the future.
This unprecedented move immediately caused a social stir.
At first, the media had cynically dismissed it as another publicity stunt by a major corporation, but that attitude gradually began to change.
Heartfelt stories from people helped by the foundation spread through social media, and Daeseung Group’s image shot through the roof, particularly among younger people.
[Restaurant Owner] We were about to close because we were behind on the rent, but Daeseung saved us. I’ll never forget this kindness for the rest of my life.
[Job Seeker] I didn’t even have money for transportation to interviews... Thank you so much, I could cry. I’ll definitely repay it after I get a job.
[Newlyweds] We had no money for baby formula and felt completely helpless... Daeseung is our family’s lifesaver.
.
“The Financial Services Commission contacted us. They plan to establish an additional government-led microfinance fund worth seven trillion won by benchmarking our foundation’s successful model, and they want to entrust its operation to the Daeseung Microfinance Foundation.”
...A success?
Losing money was a success to me, but it felt strange to hear other people call it that too.
“Uh... what does our foundation gain from that?”
“There would only be a small management fee in direct revenue...”
“All right. Accept it, and keep that fee to a minimum as well.”
I nodded readily.
After all, we would not be making money.
As long as that was not the case, I did not care.
We would only be spending government money on its behalf, so the group’s assets would not increase.
.
“We have now been given the opportunity to operate the largest financial laboratory in South Korea with seven trillion won in government funds. And we have a complete monopoly.”
President Jeon was giving a presentation before Daeseung’s senior executive team.
The Vice Chairman was absent, but President Jeon did not bother explaining the matter further, since the Vice Chairman would naturally already know.
Chairman Kang Sinsu had always arranged matters this way when the entire group needed to know something. Even a company president would personally present important information before the other presidents.
“The data we obtain through the foundation is no longer simply personal information. Who succeeds, and who fails. What helps people get back on their feet, and what makes them collapse again. With the enormous sum of seven trillion won, we will control and experiment with all those variables, completing the most sophisticated Alternative Credit Scoring Model.”
“By Alternative Credit Scoring Model, do you mean evaluation standards that differ from conventional credit scores?”
“That is correct. Communications-bill payment histories, online shopping patterns, social media activity data... even psychological test results. It is a new algorithm that quantifies diligence and future potential that could not be measured in monetary terms. Once this model is complete, we will be the first to discover prime customers that others cannot see. A market of millions of potential customers, rejected merely because of their low credit ratings, will open solely to Daeseung.”
President Jeon’s eyes burned with enthusiasm.
“Even if other banks poured in trillions of won, they could never secure this core technology and data. Yet with government support, we will complete it in the safest and most reliable way possible. The government gains justification for having helped ordinary people, while we seize the future of finance. Those seven trillion won are not loan capital. They are, in effect, the largest R&D investment fund in history, secured from the government by the Vice Chairman.”
“The Vice Chairman... understood all of this from the beginning...?”
“That is correct.”
President Jeon answered in a voice full of certainty.
“We are rewriting the history of finance. And at the center of it all stands our Vice Chairman.”
.
Kang Daeun’s attention was entirely focused on the Daeseung Microfinance Foundation, but the destructive butterfly effect he had caused was also reaching Daeseung Life, another revenue stream for Daeseung Group.
Kang Daeun had issued a vague yet impossible-to-defy directive of “customer-centered management” to the entire financial holding company. Each affiliate president interpreted it as an absolute command reflecting the Vice Chairman’s will, and passed it down to the front lines.
As a result, a strange change began within Daeseung Life’s Insurance Claims Review Team, or SIU.
Originally, the department’s main job had been to uncover insurance fraud and dig through loopholes in policy terms to find any possible grounds to deny or reduce claim payments.
But after the Vice Chairman’s directive, the team’s KPIs, or key performance indicators, changed from “claim denial rate” to “customer satisfaction” and “prompt payment rate.”
“Team Leader, is this... really true? Our KPIs have changed?”
The deputy team leader, the team’s most senior member and a person known as the “master of reductions,” stared blankly at the stack of documents they had been about to use to issue a claim denial notice, even after hearing the department head’s words.
They belonged to a policyholder diagnosed with a rare disease.
Just moments earlier, they had constructed a flawless argument for refusing to pay even a single won out of tens of millions in insurance money, based on one ambiguous clause buried deep in the policy.
At the very moment they were conducting a final review and admiring the sophistication of their reasoning, an order that denied their entire twenty-year career came down.
“It is the Vice Chairman’s directive. Do not argue. From now on, our goal is not denying claims. It is customer satisfaction. The best team will be the one that satisfies customers however it can and pays them the fastest.”
The office erupted.
Veteran reviewers who had devoted more than a decade to blocking claim payments suffered a severe identity crisis.
This place had been the last bastion of reason, protecting the company’s assets from customers’ tears, emotional appeals, and vicious insurance-fraud rings.
That pride was what had sustained them all those years.
“Then what does that make everything we’ve done until now? Were we nothing but scamming bastards who fleeced customers?”
“If we just give customers everything they ask for, who couldn’t do this job?”
All kinds of complaints burst out.
But the deputy team leader was different.
Amid the confusion, they saw a new path.
An employee’s fate was to do what they were told.
Since things had come to this, they decided to devote all their ability to the new KPIs.
With the same persistence they had once used to dig through policies to deny payments, they now began tearing through them to find any possible justification for paying.
Only the prey had changed from a rabbit to a carrot. Their instincts had not.
“Assistant Manager Kim, come here. This rare-disease case, the policy clause is a little ambiguous, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Team Leader. That is why I determined that the grounds for denying payment were clear...”
“No. If the policy is ambiguous, that means our company failed to explain it properly. Under the principles of policy interpretation, we should interpret it in the customer’s favor. Pay the full amount immediately. No, wait. We took so long with the review that the customer must have suffered a great deal of anxiety. Check whether we can give them something like interest for delayed payment as well.”
“...What? Interest for delayed payment?”
From that day onward, Daeseung Life’s SIU transformed from an organization that fought to avoid paying insurance claims into a strange group competing to pay more, and faster.
Before long, odd rumors began circulating through online insurance communities, parenting forums, and other corners of the internet.
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