How Hana Bank’s AI Pension Robo-Advisor Is Reshaping Retirement Planning in South Korea

In late December 2025, Hana Bank announced a new service in the IRP sphere: the “AI Pension Investment Withdrawal Solution”, claimed to be the first in the Korean banking sector. This service aims to address the performance challenges not just in accumulation of pension assets but in withdrawal and income generation phases—a shift that responds to increasingly elderly demographics and longer life expectancies. [2]

The disclosed capabilities are ambitious: using a goal-based investing model developed in-house with Hana Financial TI and the Hana Financial Convergence Technology Institute; more frequent rebalancing every six months; scenario-based verification and new deposit product recommendations alongside advanced asset allocation models. Importantly, the service is scheduled for phased rollout, starting in branches and moving online via Hana One Q and internet banking in Q1 2026. [2]

This announcement builds on earlier innovation by Hana: in March 2025 it launched the first bank sector “Robo-Advisor Discretionary Management Service” for IRPs. That service lets IRP subscribers entrust contributions up to 9 million KRW annually under algorithmic discretionary management. [1] Concurrently, Hana has expanded its ETF-based retirement pension product offerings—“Retirement Pension ETF” sales exceeded 2 trillion won by mid-2025, and its set of ETFs offered increased to 159 products. [4]

Performance data supports Hana’s leading position: by end-Q3 2025, its retirement pension reserves were approximately 44.1083 trillion KRW. That represents growth of about 3.8349 trillion KRW year-on-year, driven mostly by IRP accounts (2.6583 trillion) and also by Defined Contribution (DC) plans (1.1586 trillion). In the non-principal guaranteed DC segment, Hana achieved the highest operating return among Korean commercial banks at 17.18%. [3]

Strategic implications suggest that Hana is doubling down on AI-enabled, differentiated pension asset management as a competitive lever. With governments, regulators, and consumers more focused on retirement security—not just accumulation but sustainable withdrawal income—this offering positions Hana ahead. Yet many open issues remain: fee transparency, actual realized performance, how it behaves in down markets, regulatory oversight of AI models (especially around bias, risk management), and how Hana’s product compares to rivals (e.g., KB Kookmin Bank, Kyobo Securities, Korea Investment & Securities) who’ve also expanded AI-based RA retirement pension services. [5][6][7]