South Korea’s NH Financial Group said Tuesday that it has decided to invest a total 500 billion won ($451.9 million) in improving its information technology operations and services.

“To bolster customer protection and services, we have decided to invest a total of 500 billion won in our IT operations,” NH said in a statement.

Of the total investment, 320 billion won will be funneled into upgrading IT services of its flagship commercial bank, NH NongHyup Bank, while the rest will fund its insurance and brokerage units.

Some 10 billion won will be spent on upgrading the firm’s brokerage arm NH Investment & Securities’ mobile trading system. The brokerage has upgraded its MTS server to handle a traffic of 600,000 users simultaneously last year, and plans to increase the figure to 1 million this year. Overall, the brokerage will receive a total of 46.9 billion won for its IT services.

NH has highlighted its goal of accelerating digitalization since the beginning of the year and its chairman Son Byung-hwan has been directly involved in related management, the firm said. Sohn recently visited NH’s comprehensive financial services arm NH Capital’s headquarters to offer a more “hands-on” digital management.

Through a separate investment, NH Capital received 30 billion won to improve its data and digital system. It has recently kicked-off its mobile app development as well, according to NH.

NH’s net profit for the first three months of the year jumped 78.4 percent on-year to 604.4 billion won. Its total assets stood at 494.1 trillion won as of end-March.

By Jung Min-kyung (mkjung@heraldcorp.com)