Korean traditional insurance firms show growing engagement with in-house ventures to seek a breakthrough to rival agile fintech platforms and increase contact points with young consumers amid digital transformation and MyData trends.

Samsung Life Insurance Co., the country’s South leading life insurer, is preparing to open the industry’s first operation in the metaverse after one of its in-house ventures came up with the virtual world business idea.

Samsung Life Insurance under top conglomerate Samsung Group is leveraging creativity from its in-house ventures for innovative business ideas for growth. The latest idea to be realized is to open a branch on a metaverse platform which will serve as a channel to reach out to young consumers not interested in insurance.

Samsung Life Insurance is also working on a commercial launch of a personalized nutritional supplement recommendation platform, which also started with an idea from its in-house venture. The platform gives customized recommendations about necessary nutrients based on personal conditions.

Another idea proposed by Samsung Life Insurance’s in-house venture is a project that informs users of unclaimed insurance money. The company plans to create the system by September this year.

Kyobo Life Insurance Co. selected nine in-house ventures this year for business idea development and Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance is running an idea test lab called Inno-α Lab, which started in 2018.

Financial authorities are supportive of this move in the industry with deregulations to allow more firms to carry out innovative projects.

In an industry meeting last November, Financial Supervisory Service Governor Jeong Eun-bo said that regulations will be eased and modernized to help widen the scope of business activities and marketing through video chats and other digital tools by traditional insurance companies as well as their ownership of subsidiaries to boost asset management and healthcare industries.

By Shin Chan-ok and Lee Eun-joo

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