Anna Jiwon Park has been covering the politics at The Korea Times since the summer of 2024, when she joined the press pool for the Office of the President in Korea. Prior to that, she spent about five years reporting extensively on financial markets, regulatory authorities and the financial industry. She joined The Korea Times in 2019 after spending eight years as a broadcast journalist at Arirang TV, Korea’s leading global broadcaster, covering politics, defense and culture.
Local financial firms' overseas assets quadrupled over last 10 years
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By Anna J. Park
By Anna J. Park
Local financial companies' overseas assets have more than quadrupled over the past decade, as the expansion of local firms into foreign markets increased, mostly in the U.S. and Southeast Asia.
This is according to the latest research conducted by CEOSCORE, a local corporate data research firm, on 39 local financial companies that published their half-year financial reports for this year on their affiliated businesses overseas.
The aggregate number of overseas subsidiaries owned by the 39 local financial firms stood at 268, with their entire asset size reaching 159.3 trillion won ($112 billion). The total size of overseas assets held by local financial firms surged 4.6 times compared to the first half of 2012.
Over the past decade, the entire asset size of the 39 financial companies, combining both overseas and local ones, doubled from 1,910 trillion won in the first half of 2012 to 4,060 trillion won in the first half of 2022. The numbers show that the aggregate overseas assets of the firms displayed a much faster rate of increase compared to their local assets, meaning that the companies focused on expanding overseas investments during the past decade.
By category, securities firms posted the highest increase rate of about 1,800 percent during the period, followed by non-life insurers and life insurers, which stood at 337 percent and 338 percent, respectively. Specifically, Mirae Asset Securities logged the highest jump in its overseas asset size to 29.6 trillion won, up a whopping 20.7 times from a decade ago.
By region, the change in pattern by the local companies in terms of their overseas investment is more evident. China took up 45.4 percent of the firms' overseas assets back in 2012, but saw its portion reduced to 27.3 percent in the first half of this year. Japan's weight has also shrunk to 8.1 percent this year from 20.8 percent in 2012.
At the same time, the companies' investments in the U.S. and Southeast Asian countries soared during the same period. The U.S.' weight in the firms' overseas entire assets rose to 20.3 percent from 9.3 percent a decade ago, while Southeast Asian countries, such as Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia, logged the highest growth in their proportion in the firms' overseas assets.