Q3 2026 earnings results

Insurance, investment gains up 9.8% and 6.7% respectively

[Provided by Samsung Fire]
[Provided by Samsung Fire]

Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance said Thursday that its nine-month cumulative net profit attributable to controlling shareholders reached 1.87 trillion won ($1.4 billion), up 4.6 percent from the same period a year earlier.

Consolidated pretax profit came to 2.5 trillion won. Insurance profit continued its year-on-year improvement trend into the third quarter, rising 9.8 percent to 1.51 trillion won. Investment profit grew 6.7 percent year-on-year to 1.04 trillion won, despite a slowdown in the third quarter driven by heightened market volatility.

Looking at the third quarter alone, consolidated operating profit fell 13 percent year-on-year to 577.4 billion won. Sales rose 13.6 percent to 6.51 trillion won, while net profit declined 8.3 percent to 493.7 billion won.

In long-term insurance, the company managed its entire value chain with a focus on quality growth, recording a nine-month new-contract contractual service margin of 1.84 trillion won. Total CSM rose 667.4 billion won from the end of last year to 14.84 trillion won.

Insurance profit in the segment reached 1.23 trillion won, up 1.1 percent year-on-year, driven by improvements in protection policy persistency rates and loss ratio management. The 25th-month and 37th-month persistency rates for protection policies improved by 4.8 percentage points and 7.4 percentage points, respectively, from the same period a year earlier. The risk loss ratio stabilized at 97.9 percent in the third quarter, roughly in line with the prior-year level, reflecting ongoing profitability management efforts.

Auto insurance posted nine-month insurance revenue of 4.14 trillion won, a slight decline from the same period a year earlier, which Samsung Fire attributed to a deliberate shift toward improving contract portfolio quality over expanding sales volume. Despite higher per-claim losses from rising compensation costs, a lower accident rate from improved contract characteristics and higher earned premiums per coverage item pushed third-quarter insurance profit to 19.1 billion won. The nine-month cumulative insurance profit of 39.2 billion won kept the segment in the black.

General insurance recorded nine-month insurance revenue of 1.45 trillion won, up 11.9 percent year-on-year, on the back of growth in both domestic and overseas business. Although volatility temporarily increased due to large-loss events from fire and flood damage in the third quarter, the cumulative loss ratio fell 1.2 percentage points year-on-year to 62.4 percent. Insurance profit reached 212.9 billion won, up 35.9 percent from the same period a year earlier.

On the asset management side, the nine-month investment yield stood at 3.33 percent. Investment income on managed assets rose 3.9 percent year-on-year to 2.4 trillion won.

Meanwhile, Samsung Fire's board decided Monday to acquire the remaining 60 percent stake in Canopius, a UK-based global specialty insurer, together with global private equity fund KKR and Korea Investment Corporation. The total acquisition price is approximately $2.47 billion, assuming the deal closes by the end of March next year. Samsung Fire will invest approximately $1.67 billion to raise its stake to 80.6 percent.

"This acquisition is an important milestone in the corporate value enhancement plan announced in early 2025," a Samsung Fire official said. "It will serve as a strategic turning point in diversifying our business structure — currently centered on domestic business-to-consumer operations — into global business-to-business operations, by securing a stable revenue source through a quality asset in the Lloyd's market and internalizing world-class professional talent and business infrastructure." The official added that the company's basic direction on capital policy, including its existing shareholder return plan, remains unchanged.

Koo Young-min, Samsung Fire's chief financial officer, said the company is "executing a profitability-focused strategy through differentiated risk management capabilities and capital resilience, even in a business environment where earnings pressure persists across the industry, and is building a structural improvement in core business competitiveness." Koo added that the company will "continue to expand its stable earnings capacity and revenue base, and realize long-term shareholder value enhancement through consistent strategy execution and transparent communication."


kimstar@heraldcorp.com