Pepper Group has made its entry into the Asian financial services market with the acquisition of Evergreen Savings Bank, a South Korean mutual savings bank.Pepper has maintained a steady international expansion program since the financial crisis. It bought buying GE's mortgage business in Australia and New Zealand, as well as mortgage servicing businesses in Ireland, Spain and the United Kingdom. Pepper's co-chief executive, Patrick Tuttle, said mutual banks in South Korea are not structured in a way Australians would recognise. Evergreen had an institutional owner, and the South Korean banking regulator authorised Pepper to buy all the shares.Tuttle said that about a decade ago the South Korean mutual banking sector moved out of its traditional market of deposit taking and residential mortgages, and personal lending, and got into commercial lending and development finance. There was a big shake-out after the financial crisis and the number of mutual banks dropped from around 300 to 100.Evergreen, which starts trading as Pepper Savings Bank this week, has two retail branches, 30,000 active customers and US$175.9 million worth of assets. Tuttle said Pepper Savings Bank would operate in the traditional South Korean mutual bank market, offering deposits, residential mortgages and personal loans."We have been looking at this market for two years and we think there is scope to compete with the big South Korean retail banks," he said.Pepper has hired a South Korean team to run the bank. It is headed by Matthew Chang, who has 20 years of experience in retail banking in South Korea and the United States.Tuttle said the branding change to Pepper was about building recognition in South Korean institutional and regulatory circles of the group's international strength in loan servicing and asset management.