Samsung Group's insurance siblings, Samsung Life and Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance, recorded consecutive all-time high profits in the first half of this year. However, their core insurance businesses showed divergent results. Samsung Life's profit growth was driven by investment gains, but its insurance underwriting profit fell short of expectations due to one-time factors. In contrast, Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance posted strong results in both insurance and investment underwriting.
According to the first-half management performance announcement released on the 13th, Samsung Life and Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance recorded a combined net income attributable to controlling shareholders of 3.2658 trillion won for the first half of this year.
Samsung Life's net income for the previous first half was 1.8935 trillion won, up 35.8% from the same period last year, while Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance reported 1.3723 trillion won, an increase of 10.2% over the same period.
Both companies achieved their highest-ever net profits on a first-half basis. Their combined net income exceeds Hanwha Financial Group's first-half performance of 2.4029 trillion won by 862.9 billion won. In 2023, this gap was only 168.4 billion won.
Investment gains were particularly prominent for both companies. Samsung Life's first-half investment profit reached 1.858 trillion won, an 82.0% increase from the same period last year. Although this includes a one-time reserve reversal of 425.7 billion won, the growth rate still reached 40.3% even after excluding this item. Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance's investment profit was 788 billion won, up 22.0% from the same period.
The two companies' insurance underwriting profits diverged. Samsung Life's insurance service profit fell to 533 billion won, a 35.9% decrease from the same period last year, impacted by one-time costs such as a 52.6 billion won retirement provision and a 30 billion won increase in labor expenses. Even excluding these items, insurance underwriting profit was 615.7 billion won, down 25.9% year-on-year.
However, Samsung Life's new contract insurance contract margin (CSM) increased by 20.4% from the same period last year. The company announced it would secure more than 1.7 trillion won in new contract CSM in the second half of this year and maintained its annual target of over 3 trillion won.
Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance's insurance underwriting profit rose to 1.1145 trillion won, a 10.9% increase from the same period last year. Of the 109.1 billion won net income increase, approximately 74%, or 80.7 billion won, came from general insurance. This was influenced by a decline in the general insurance loss ratio from 62.9% to 56.9%, a drop of 6.0 percentage points due to fewer major accidents.
Starting in the second half, reduced claims for manual therapy are expected to impact Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance's performance. Daily average manual therapy claims were 450 million won in the first half of this year but have dropped to around 100 million won this month.
Meanwhile, regarding its non-participation in the main bid for selling KDB Life Insurance, Samsung Life explained that "it was judged that achieving strategic synergies would be difficult." Previously, Samsung Life had been mentioned as a potential acquirer of KDB Life Insurance, a subsidiary of Korea Development Bank, but did not participate in the main sale bid on the 7th.
Instead, the company announced it will actively pursue overseas M&A to overcome growth limitations in the domestic life insurance market.
Regarding the value-up program policy, the company stated it would announce an earlier timeline before next year's shareholders' meeting. On Samsung Electronics' special dividend, it said, "It is difficult to specify at this point as timing and scale may be unpredictable," but added, "Once the timing and scale of the special dividend are determined, we will increase annual per-share dividends every year, including this amount, while maintaining an adequate capital ratio."
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