SEOUL, June 10 (Korea Bizwire) — Amid a shrinking economy due to the coronavirus, this year’s insurance premium income is expected to outstrip last year’s record. The Korea Insurance Research Institute (KIRI) reported Tuesday that income arising from insurance premiums, excluding retirement pensions, will reach 179 trillion won (US$150 billion) this year, up by 1.5 [...]
SEOUL, June 8 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s main stock index hit the highest level in valuation since 2002, highlighting stock prices’ roller-coaster gains compared with the actual earnings of the pandemic-hit companies, analysts said Monday. The price-to-earnings ratio (PER) of the benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) stood at 25, the highest since [...]
SEOUL, June 8 (Korea Bizwire) — Earnings forecasts for South Korea’s listed firms rebounded from a long downturn last week amid rising hopes for their possible exit from the coronavirus shock, a market tracker said Monday. Companies listed on the country’s main stock market saw the average estimate of their earnings per share (EPS) for [...]
SEOUL, June 7 (Korea Bizwire) — Business lobby groups in 18 countries forecast the global economy to contract 4 percent this year due to the impact of the new coronavirus outbreak, a South Korean industry association said Sunday. The 4 percent negative growth outlook is worse than the International Monetary Fund’s forecast of a 3 [...]
SEOUL, June 5 (Korea Bizwire) — Emboldened by a recent market bull run, South Korean retail investors are scrambling to borrow money to buy shares in anticipation of price gains down the road, data showed Friday. Outstanding margin loans to retail investors stood at 11.4 trillion won (US$9.3 billion) as of Wednesday, according to the [...]
SEOUL, June 4 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s state employment insurance scheme could run out of money this year if the novel coronavirus continues to hit the country’s job market until year-end, a report said Thursday. The report from the National Assembly Budget Office estimated that the number of unemployment benefit recipients could reach 1.84 [...]
SEOUL, May 31 (Korea Bizwire) — The volume of short-term floating capital in South Korea hit an all-time high of more than 1,100 trillion won (US$888 billion) amid low interest rates and increased uncertainties over the novel coronavirus pandemic, data showed Sunday. Cash and other forms of short-term capital, including demand deposits and money market [...]
SEOUL, May 31 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean held 3.9 credit cards on average last year, data showed Sunday, as credit card holdings in the country continue to increase as more people use credit cards as their preferred payment method. There were 110.98 million credit cards in South Korea as of end-2019, up 5.92 million [...]
SEOUL, May 27 (Korea Bizwire) — Kyobo Life Insurance Co., one of South Korea’s leading life insurers, said Tuesday that it has started developing and operating its own insurance fraud prediction system that incorporates artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning technology. K-FDS (Kyobo Fraud Detection System) is a system that enables AI to learn insurance fraud [...]
SEOUL, May 22 (Korea Bizwire) – The market capitalization of Samsung Biologics Co. and internet giant Naver Corp. has jumped sharply on South Korea’s main stock market over a one-year period, despite the coronavirus impact on the equities markets, data showed Friday. Samsung Biologics’ market cap stood at 40.3 trillion won (US$32.6 billion) at Thursday [...]