Woori Financial Group is a Seoul-based banking and financial services holdings company and is the largest bank in South Korea. Woori has had a short history as a financial institution.It was formed in 2001 from the forced merger of 4 predecessor commercial banks and an investment bank (Hanvit, Peace, Kwangju and Kyongnam Banks and Hanaro Investment Banking and their subsidiaries). This came about as a part of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, which affected the operations of virtually all banks and financial firms in South Korea.