South Korea: Life Insurance: Benchmarks for Life Insurance Policies in Korea

We recently spoke with a South Korean benefits consultancy about life insurance policy norms in their country. We thought their commentary was important to share.

Life Insurance After a Diagnosis

Plan payouts in South Korea are typically 3x annual pay, but if an employee gets cancer for example, and dies from it, the policy is reduced to 1x annual pay.

Indeed, if an insured is diagnosed with cancer while covered by the policy, the carrier reduces the insured’s amount of death coverage from disease on renewal. Life insurers know about diagnoses because they can access employee’s medical information through hospital networks.

However, non-life insurance companies do offer life insurance that covers death from a disease. Those policies cannot exceed KRW 100 mil.

Also note that Korean nationals cannot be covered under a global policy.