National Agriculture Cooperative Federation

NACF operates a two-tier structure. The federation itself represents member agricultural cooperatives, while NongHyup Financial Group — a publicly listed holding company — runs the banking, securities, insurance, and asset management businesses that deploy the cooperative capital. NH-Amundi Asset Management is the primary vehicle for public market and alternative investments.

Capital comes directly from the deposit base and surplus reserves of South Korea's regional agricultural cooperatives, which represent roughly two million member farmers. This creates a permanent, sticky capital pool distinct from third-party asset management firms.

Investment decisions are delegated to the professional management teams within NH Financial Group and its subsidiaries. The federation's elected chairman, currently Kang Ho-dong, provides strategic oversight, while NH Financial Group's CEO and chief investment officers manage day-to-day portfolio allocation.

NACF uses both approaches. NH-Amundi Asset Management handles a significant portion of public market allocation internally. For alternatives — private equity, infrastructure, and overseas real estate — the group commits as a limited partner to external funds while occasionally participating in direct co-investments alongside established GPs.

Public disclosures indicate NACF has been steadily increasing its alternative exposure over the past decade, targeting roughly 15-20% of its managed assets across private equity, real estate, infrastructure, and hedge funds. Infrastructure, including overseas energy and logistics assets, has been a particular area of recent expansion.

Both are agricultural cooperative federations with captive rural deposit bases, but NACF has built a more sophisticated financial markets operation through NH Financial Group's public listing and asset management scaling. NACF's overseas alternatives program and securities arm are more externally facing than JA-Zenchu's historically conservative posture.

Yes. The federation operates substantial agricultural support programs, rural infrastructure development projects, and farmer welfare initiatives funded through cooperative surpluses. These are legally and operationally separate from NH Financial Group's investment activities, though they draw from the same underlying cooperative economics.