South Korea regulators to upgrade insurance benefits system

There is still about $11b (KRW12.6t) in unclaimed insurance funds.

South Korea’s Financial Services Commission (FSC) is working on simplifying the process of finding unclaimed insurance benefits, it said in a statement.

The system upgrade will be done by Q3 this year, the FSC hopes.

Once finished, the upgrade will allow customers to look for unclaimed benefits and claim for disbursements. There still exists about $11b (KRW12.6t) in unclaimed insurance funds, it said.

The unclaimed insurance funds search website was launched in December 2017 to help beneficiaries find their unclaimed insurance benefits more easily. The FSC has also carried out a campaign to help more beneficiaries get disbursements by sending out letters to all insurance holders with unclaimed benefits since the end of 2017. 

In 2020, about $2.9b (KRW3.3t) in disbursements has been made out in more than 1.35 million cases. In 2021, the cumulative amount of disbursements has already reached $1.24b (KRW1.4t) in about 495,000 cases by the end of April.