NH Investment & Securities (005940.KS), the brokerage arm of Korea's agricultural-cooperative financial group, said on June 2 it will raise ₩400 billion ($292 million) through a third-party rights issue to its controlling shareholder, NH NongHyup Financial Group (the cooperative-owned financial holding company), with payment due June 29 (ChosunBiz; Seoul Economic Daily). The raise lifts NH's consolidated equity capital — ₩9.965 trillion ($7.3 billion) at the end of Q1 2026 — past the ₩10 trillion mark, making it the third Korean brokerage to clear that tier alongside Korea Investment & Securities and Mirae Asset Securities, the two domestic firms that pioneered the product at issue (Seoul Economic Daily).
For a firm already this large, the obvious question is why ₩400 billion matters at all. The answer is a single product line: the Integrated Managed Account (IMA, 종합투자계좌), a principal-guaranteed investment vehicle that has quickly become the most coveted funding engine in Korean securities. ChosunBiz reported the proceeds will be split evenly — ₩200 billion ($146 million) to expand IMA capital capacity and ₩200 billion to widen credit lending.
Why IMA is worth a capital raise
The appeal is structural. Issuance notes (발행어음), the funding tool large brokerages have relied on, are legally capped at 200% of equity capital. IMA carries no such ceiling, letting a firm raise large pools of cash and redeploy them into corporate finance, acquisition financing and alternative investments — so funding scale, and the profit it can generate, rises with the balance sheet rather than a regulatory cap (ChosunBiz).
That is precisely why the equity threshold matters. Only brokerages designated by Korea's Financial Services Commission (FSC) with at least ₩8 trillion ($5.8 billion) in equity may run an IMA business. NH won its license in March 2026, after Korea Investment & Securities and Mirae Asset Securities secured theirs in November 2025 (ChosunBiz). The catch: because IMA's principal guarantee inflates risk-weighted assets, scaling it pressures a firm's net operating capital ratio (NCR), which regulators require above 100%. NH's NCR stood at 159.3% at Q1-end, relatively low among large brokers, per ChosunBiz — making fresh equity the precondition for growth. The June raise follows a ₩650 billion ($474 million) rights issue from the same shareholder in August 2025 (Seoul Economic Daily).
Demand has validated the bet. NH's first IMA product, a ₩400 billion offering, reached full subscription within five business days, and a second ₩120 billion ($88 million) product also sold out (Seoul Economic Daily; ChosunBiz).
A three-firm race, three strategies
The field is small and the approaches diverge. NH is courting retail money by cutting the minimum subscription to ₩100,000 ($73), one-tenth of the ₩1 million entry point set by Mirae Asset and Korea Investment; retail investors made up 45% of subscribers to its first product, per ChosunBiz. It plans to run IMA cash conservatively, anchored in interest-bearing assets, acquisition financing and corporate loans, while studying higher-yielding designs above the current 4% return (ChosunBiz).
Mirae Asset is also conservative, issuing in ₩100 billion tranches — roughly ₩300 billion ($219 million) across three products so far — with more than 70% in rate-bearing assets and about 18% in mezzanine and unlisted equity (ChosunBiz). Korea Investment has been the most aggressive, deploying its debut ₩1 trillion ($730 million) product — which sold out in four days — into hybrid securities, large M&A acquisition financing and overseas private debt (ChosunBiz). One backdrop dampening sales: after the KOSPI (Korea's benchmark index) returned more than 70% over the past year, demand for mid-single-digit IMA yields cooled before recent volatility revived it, per ChosunBiz.
What to watch
The competitive set is set to widen. KB Securities completed a ₩700 billion ($511 million) rights issue from parent KB Financial Group in February 2026 — issuing 33.33 million new shares at ₩21,000 each, fully subscribed by the parent — lifting its equity capital toward roughly ₩7.7 trillion ($5.6 billion) and closer to the ₩8 trillion IMA-eligibility threshold, though KB has said the raise was not specifically for IMA (Seoul Economic Daily). Samsung Securities and Meritz Securities are pursuing issuance-note licenses, ChosunBiz reported. The data points that will confirm whether NH's low-barrier, retail-led model can scale are its next IMA issuances and whether that growth holds the 4% yield without straining the NCR it just spent ₩400 billion to shore up.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Figures are sourced from the cited Korean and English financial press and reflect company disclosures as reported; currency conversions use an approximate rate of 1 USD = 1,370 KRW.
