SEOUL, Nov.24 (Korea Bizwire) – Next week, an online insurance supermarket will open for the first time in Korea. Customers will be able to compare different insurance plans online, and once a decision is made, even sign up for their chosen program. Officials say that by next year, online insurance shopping should be normalized as [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 17 (Korea Bizwire) - South Korean listed firms saw their sales edge down in the first nine months of the year but their bottom lines improved on the back of reduced costs for raw materials, the country’s bourse operator said Tuesday. Sales of 498 firms traded on the main KOSPI market totaled 1,205.6 trillion [...]
SEOUL, Nov.16 (Korea Bizwire) – The number of pets in Korea is increasing with an increase in the number of one or two-person households, but the pet insurance market that provides for them is still small. Researcher Kim Se-joong of the Korea Insurance Research Institute reported that even though the number of pets reached [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 12 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korean stocks closed slightly lower Thursday as investors took to the sidelines ahead of top Fed officials’ remarks that could provide a glimpse of the U.S. central bank’s monetary policy direction, analysts said. The local currency lost ground against the U.S. dollar. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 9 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korean banks’ lending to large companies fell in the first nine months of the year amid a protracted economic slump, despite an upturn in overall loans, industry data showed Monday. Outstanding loans extended by Shinhan Bank, Kookmin Bank and four other major lenders reached 1,035.85 trillion won (US$898.6 [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 30 (Korea Bizwire) – On the first day of Korea’s new ‘account transfer system’, users showed much interest. The Payinfo site where the service is provided even went down after being flooded with traffic. According to the Korea Financial Telecommunications and Clearings Institute, the number of connections as of 3 p.m. reached 159,205, [...]
Samsung Electronics has announced that its Samsung Pay mobile payment system now has more than one million subscribers, only two months after its launch. (Image : Yonhap) SEOUL, Oct. 26 (Korea Bizwire) – Samsung Electronics has announced that its Samsung Pay mobile payment system now has more than one million subscribers, only two months [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 19 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s top financial regulator said Sunday that it will allow local insurance firms to decide premiums for their insurance policies on their own in a bid to promote price competition in the long-slumped market. The Financial Services Commission (FSC) said it will remove guidelines for setting insurance premiums from the beginning of 2016. Since 2000, the financial authorities have required local insurers to set aside a certain amount of money to make [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 8 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean securities companies are waging a fierce competition to take over KDB Daewoo Securities Co., one of the nation’s leading brokerages, in a deal that could come as a game changer for the industry. The Korea Development Bank (KDB), a state-run policy lender, is seeking to sell off [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 22 (Korea Bizwire) – Large general agencies (GAs) are expanding their sales power, employing more than 100,000 financial consultants and surpassing 10 percent market share. However, their cases of incomplete sales of insurance went up slightly. The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) announced that as large GAs with more than 500 financial consultants are increasing [...]