[뉴스토마토 권유승 기자] KB Insurance, which had advocated sound management and avoided excessive competition, launched an attack business, including a large amount of new collateral and expanding the subscription amount to the highest level in the industry. As the only big 5 non-life insurers that showed a decline in net profit, the new CEO Kim Ki-hwan is likely to be under pressure.
According to the insurance industry on the 4th, KB Insurance introduced a lot of new collateral this month to celebrate the new year. First of all, it began strengthening cancer insurance coverage by establishing a new collateral for thyroid cancer drug approval treatment cost for the first time in the industry. Targeted anticancer drug licensed treatment fee, which was first launched in the non-life industry, has also been expanded to a maximum subscription amount of 55 million won (50 million won for the first time, 5 million won once a year). The subscription amount for targeted anticancer drugs licensed treatment by other insurance companies is around 50 million won.
New collateral was also introduced for child insurance. For the first time in the industry, atopic diagnosis fee to guarantee fetal mild atopy was newly established, and a thyroid cancer drug treatment fee of 2 million won was also installed. Last month, it was decided to compensate for congenital diseases, which were exempt from congenital malformations, transformations, and chromosomal abnormalities, only to pre-natal subscribers.
Such aggressive sales stand out because KB Insurance has been immersed in the bleeding competition in the industry by advocating substantial management that avoids short-term earnings boost and top-line growth. In fact, the premium for new long-term insurance contracts for the five top non-life insurers, including Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance, Hyundai Marine & Fire Insurance, DB Insurance, KB Insurance, and Meritz Fire & Marine Insurance, increased by 26% a year, while KB Insurance increased only 11.2%.
In particular, KB Insurance is known as a product that concerns about deterioration of the loss ratio (the ratio of insurance payments to the insurance premiums received) as there have not been significant statistics accumulated yet for the target anticancer drug licensed treatment cost collateral, which was recently introduced by KB Insurance for the first time in the non-life insurance industry and is leading the market. KB Insurance also increased the number of new cancer insurance contracts by 10 times a month with this collateral.
The performance burden of KB Insurance’s new CEO Ki-hwan Kim is also expected to be overwhelming. This is because, unlike intrinsic value, which is rising through sound management, KB Insurance’s performance has been on the decline for three years. KB Insurance’s net profit in 2019 was 1679 billion won, a 53.42% drop from 3605 billion won in 2017. The cumulative net profit in the third quarter of last year was 147.8 billion won, down 14% from the same period last year. On the other hand, during the same period, Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance, Hyundai Marine & Fire Insurance, DB Insurance and Meritz Fire & Marine Insurance and other big 5 non-life insurers recorded good results.
An official from KB Insurance said, “It is not that the direction of the strategy that was being pursued has suddenly changed,” and said, “I think we will go in the direction of reinforcing earnings such as profitability while maintaining the basis of value management.”
KB Insurance Gangnam office building. Photo/KB Insurance
Reporter Kwon Yoo-seung [email protected]
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