According to the Financial Supervisory Service’s preliminary 2025 results released Wednesday, insurers’ overseas units earned $197 million in net profit, up 23.8% from $159.1 million a year earlier.
Life insurers’ net profit rose 70.8% to $109.3 million, driven by newly consolidated overseas units. Excluding two newly added units and one sold unit, net profit from existing overseas units fell by $13.5 million from the previous year.
Non-life insurers posted $87.7 million in net profit, down 7.8% ($7.4 million), as natural disasters in Southeast Asia, including an earthquake in Myanmar and flooding in Thailand, weighed on results.
By business line, insurance operations recorded $128.6 million in profit, down $22.1 million from a year earlier. Financial investment and banking operations posted $34.2 million and $29.3 million, respectively, reflecting Hanwha Life’s purchase of a stake in U.S. securities firm Velocity and its acquisition of Indonesia’s Nobu Bank. The Velocity deal marked the first entry by a South Korean insurer into the U.S. securities market.
By region, profit in Asia rose $6.4 million to $121.6 million, while the United States increased $32 million to $66.4 million. Europe slipped $500,000 to $9 million.
Total assets stood at $16.24 billion at the end of last year, up 121.2% ($8.9 billion) from $7.34 billion a year earlier.
The FSS said net profit and assets jumped largely due to new overseas expansion into banking and financial investment, but added that growth slowed when excluding newly consolidated units and that non-life insurers’ results weakened due to natural disasters.
Citing heightened uncertainty from global market volatility, including Middle East tensions, and rising risks of major disasters linked to climate change, the regulator said it will closely monitor overseas units’ management and financial soundness and instruct insurers to strengthen risk management.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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