Cigna entered the South Korean market in 1987. Credit: Nattanan Kanchanaprat from Pixabay.

American insurance major Cigna is reportedly planning to establish a digital non-life insurance unit in South Korea.

Cigna will self-fund the unit and aims to open the digital non-life insurance company in the first half of 2022, Business Korea has reported.

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Cigna already offers life insurance products in the country through its subsidiary Lina Korea.

It plans to leverage its healthcare market presence to enter the digital non-life space.

Business Korea’s report says that Cigna’s non-life venture will be the first foreign firm to operate in South Korea’s non-life insurance industry.

The country’s non-life insurance industry is dominated by major insurers’ subsidiaries like Hana and Hanwha.

Cigna entered South Korean insurance market by launching Lina Korea in 1987.

Lina Korea’s assets totalled $4.47bn (KRW5.06 trillion) and net profit was $315m (KRW357.2bn) at the end of 2020.

Earlier this week, the Asian reinsurance market saw the acquisition of Singapore Reinsurance by Fairfax Asia.

The Asian unit of the Canada-based financial group Fairfax Financial received valid acceptances amounting to 90.02% of the total issued shares last week.

In March this year, Fairfax Asia made a conditional cash offer to purchase all the shares in Singapore Re.

In May, a Chinese insurtech start-up Yuanbao raised $155m in a Series C funding round led by Source Code Capital.

In March, Hong Kong-based insurer AIA Group agreed to acquire the life insurance arm of Bank of East Asia (BEA) in a cash deal worth HK$5.07bn (around $650m).

Under the agreement, AIA will buy 100% of BEA Life, a wholly-owned BEA subsidiary.