032830 - Samsung Life Insurance co., Ltd

Closed at 43% of the way from its 52-week low (₩144,800) to its 52-week high (₩497,000).

Samsung Life is South Korea's largest life insurer, with roughly a fifth of the domestic market and an asset base larger than most Korean banks. Its business is the ordinary one for a life company: it collects premiums on protection and savings policies, invests the float in bonds, loans and equities, and earns the difference between what it promised policyholders and what the assets return. Two things make it unusual. The first is accounting: since 2023 Korean insurers have reported under IFRS 17, which values policies as a contractual service margin released into profit over decades, so reported earnings say less about the current year than they do at most companies. The second is structural. Samsung Life holds roughly 8% of Samsung Electronics, a stake worth many multiples of its own market capitalisation at times, which makes it a load-bearing link in the chain by which the founding family controls the Samsung group. Korean lawmakers have repeatedly proposed forcing insurers to mark such holdings at fair value against a regulatory limit, which would compel a sale. For a US reader it is part MetLife, part holding company, and the second part explains most of the share price.