Selling Insurance Is More Lucrative

The Korea Life Insurance Association said Friday that the average income of life insurance agents rose by nearly 24 percent in the year ending March 30.

The 194,000-odd agents active during the period earned 4.57 trillion won ($3.6 billion) in commissions, the association said. The average income per agent was 23.6 million won compared with 19 million won in the previous year.

The highest income was earned by agents of Shinhan Life Insurance Co. at 30.5 million won, followed by Samsung Life Insurance Co. agents, who took home 29.4 million won each on average.

ING Life Co. and Prudential Life Insurance Co., which focus on the marketing of more expensive whole-life insurance plans, were not included in the association's survey, but their agents were found to be earning significantly higher amounts. The average income of Prudential agents was 90 million won.

Samsung Life had the largest number of agents who took home 100 million won or more during the period － 882 persons.

It was followed by Kyobo Insurance Co., which had 221 agents with more than that income and Korea Life Insurance Co., which had 132 agents earning more than 100 million won each.

by Choi Hyeon-chul