Samsung Life Insurance Co. announced in 2012 its vision to be a “Customer Centered Global Life Partner” in changing the discipline of the life insurance business. The leading life insurer in Korea also set up a long-term strategy titled, “2020 500 Trillion Won in Assets, Annual Sales of 100 Trillion Won” to rank the 15th largest life insurer in the world in terms of assets.

The Samsung affiliate doesn’t want to relax just because it is a leader in the business at home, but wants to be a global leader in the world life insurance market under its three key strategies°™strengthening its domestic operation, nurturing its future growth engines, and diversifying its business operation.

The strategy most important to the company is securing future growth engines, as it is aimed at expanding its overseas operations to boost its overall profit. Its long-term overseas profit target is 27 trillion won annually, although they currently only net about 100 billion won from overseas operations.

The company currently has operations in seven countries abroad with 12 operation units in those countries including two wholly-owned subsidiaries in Thailand and China.

Chunghwa Samsung Life Insurance Co., a local subsidiary set up in July 2005 in a 50-50 joint venture with China Airlines, is capitalized at 800 million yuan and has been able to expand its business areas from life insurance for individuals to group insurance and the sale of banccasurance to local customers, successfully diversifying its operations. The subsidiary has also diversified its life insurance products to satisfy the needs of local customers from non-dividend products to investment-type products to strengthen the competitive features of its life insurance products. 

These successful moves have improved the company’s performance results every year since its establishment, including boosts in annual sales from 6.6 billion won in 2007 to 67 billion won in 2011, an increase of 78 percent every year. Annual insurance premium collections also rose to 61.3 billion won in 2011 from 5.8 billion won in 2007 based on the won-dollar average exchange rate in 2011.

At the same time, the company has been able to expand the number of its operational cities in China from Beijing, Tianjin, and Qingdao to Chengdu, Sichuan Province. Vice Chairman Park Keun-hee attended an opening ceremony for the Chengdu branch in July 2012, to welcome various dignitaries including local government officials led by Deputy Secretary of the Communist Party in Chengdu, Chiang Jinchuan, and Korean expats with Korean Consul-general in Chengdu, Chung Man-young, among them.

The company’s operational setup in Sichuan Province is the fourth operational unit in China, after Beijing, Tianjin, and Qingdao, and is aimed at expanding the company’s operation to the western region of China while other units take care of the eastern coastal regions of China. Sichuan has a total population of 80 million with a territory five times as large as South Korea and has been the center of the Beijing government’s plan to develop the inland regions that was kicked off in 2000. There are about 1,200 Korean residents in the province.

Samsung Life plans to expand its operational bases in China to six by 2014 with China being the world’s fifth largest insurance market with insurance premium collections in 2011 amounting to $134.5 billion.

In the meantime, the company has also been doing well in Thailand with its joint venture local subsidiary, Thai Samsung Life Insurance, launched in 1997, with an average annual increase of insurance premiums coming to more than 27 percent. The company’s general agents are spread widely throughout Thailand with a base in Bangkok and is staffed by over 250 mostly local people with over 3,500 insurance policy sales agents. Morgan Stanley projected that the Thai insurance market would grow 10 percent annually for the next several years on average with insurance policyholders now amounting to only 25 percent of the total eligible to subscribe to insurance policies.

Samsung Life also operates two local subsidiaries in the United States and Great Britain, which are 100 percent owned by Samsung Life and manage around 4 trillion won in funds.

Vice Chairman Park has been at the center of the company’s overseas drive. “Samsung Life should aim at being number one in the world, not only at home, doing all it can to achieve the target in the future,” the vice chairman said, promising that the company will totally focus on its global operations, in December 2010 when he visited the company’s Chinese subsidiary Junghang Samsung, which was his first overseas tour since taking over the company’s management.