Samsung Life to Enter
Insurance Market in Beijing
Establishes its second overseas joint venture in Beijing

Samsung Life, the nation's largest life insurer, has become Asia?'s first life insurance company to enter the life insurance market in Beijing.
Samsung Life and China National Aviation Holding Co. officially inaugurated Samsung Air China Life, a 50:50 joint venture in an inaugural ceremony in Beijing on July 6.
Samsung Life's entry to the Chinese market represents a feat it has made in 10 years after it opened a representative office in China. It is the second time Samsung Life has entered an overseas market since January 1998 when it established a joint venture to enter the Thai insurance market. Samsung Life became Asia's first life insurer to enter the market in Beijing, not Shanghai where multinational insurers have sprung up.
Last November, Samsung Life obtained an interim green light on the establishment of a joint life insurance venture. In May, Chinese insurance authorities gave the final go-ahead to Samsung Air China Life.
Samsung Life has management rights over the joint venture, inaugurated with a paid-in capital of 25 billion won.? Suh Eon-dong, 48, former managing director in charge of planning at Samsung Life, takes the helm at Samsung Air China Life.
Samsung Air China Life has hired 100 Chinese life consultants to work in four sales offices, and it sells insurance policies to the general public in Beijing.
Sixty-eight executives and staff members from the China National Aviation Holding Company and Samsung Life man Samsung Air China. The staff members dispatched by Samsung Life are the veterans who have taken charge of such fields as business planning, accounting and products, and they underwent a two-year training on localization.
The Chinese life consultants have been selected among applicants with educational background of a college graduate or above though a four-stage screening and they were given a six-week basic education to be equipped with life insurance planning capabilities.
CEO Suh said Samsung Air Chine Life aims to attract as many as 1 million clients in 10 years in the world? most populous country. To this end, he said, his company will adopt a thorough localization strategy.
Suh unveiled a three-point business principle during a news conference prior to the inauguration, calling for maintaining a prudent, stable business stance, pursuing a strategy of differentiating with choice and concentration and seeking a localization strategy in the long-term perspective.
Samsung Air China Life said it will initially adopt as a business strategy Korea's success model of utilizing women's life consultants as its main channel, and it plans to initially form a product portfolio comprising full-time life insurance and health insurance products making the most of the experiences and expertise Samsung Life has accumulated during its operation in Korea.
A Samsung Life official said under a localization strategy, locally hired 100 life consultants launched business from July 7, and Samsung Air China Life is exerting itself to establish a firm business foundation in an early stage because it has made preparations for the business.
The inaugural ceremony was held at the Great People's Hall in Beijing with 300 figures, including Samsung Life President Bae Jung-choong, his China National Aviation Holding Company counterpart, participating. nw

The executives of Samsung Life and China National Aviation Holding Co. and other dignitaries attend a launching ceremony for their joint venture, Samsung Air China Life, at the Great People's Hall in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.