Thursday, September 5th, 2013
SEOUL, KOREA- The first-quarter net profit of Korea's property and casualty insurance companies fell 46.1 percent from the same period last year. According to the Financial Supervisory Service on September 4 in a report "1Q (April-June) 2013 Financial Results of P&C Insurers," the companies' aggregate net profit was 438.7 billion won.
This is 46.1 percent (375.4 billion won) lowered than that a year ago. The main reason for the worsened performance has to do with the fact that the insurers paid out 240 billion won for the loss incurred by developers of the Yongsan Business District Development Project.
In addition to the guarantee insurance loss, the companies took a huge loss in the automobile insurance area, the P&C insurers' bread-and-butter business. Their combined loss in the first quarter was 176.0 billion won, from a profit of 26.3 billion won a year ago. The only area the insurers saw a rise in profit was investment of their assets under management at 1,202.7 billion won, up 90 billion won from the first quarter of 2012.
An official of the Financial Supervisory Service in charge of the property and casualty insurance industry said, "The April-June loss of the P&C insurers was excessively high to warrant careful monitoring of the industry. The worsened performance in auto insurance will affect the whole business of the insurers."